KIN
OF THE WILD
CHARLES-G-D-ROBERTS
She IRinfcreb of the Wflb
H Bool! of animal life
Works of
Charles G. D. Roberts
j
The Prisoner of Mademoiselle (In press)
The Watchers of the Trails (/ press)
The Kindred of the Wild
The Heart of the Ancient Wood
Earth's Enigmas
Barbara Ladd
The Forge in the Forest
A Sister to Evangeline
The Marshes of Minas
A History of Canada
The Book of the Rose
Poems
New York Nocturnes
The Book of the Native
In Divers Tones (Out of print)
Songs of the Common Day (Out of print)
J
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
New England Building
Boston, Mass.
" STARTED IN MAD HASTE DOWN THE SHORE.
(See page t8q)
THE KINDRED
OF THE WILD
A BOOK OF ANIMAL- LIFE
CHARLES-GD-ROBEKTS
Author of
'The Heart <rf the AncientWood
Theifogie in the forest
*A Bister to
jg Evangelm
roems etc- a
With
L C PAGE "& COMPANY
MDCCCCn BOSTON
Copyright, IQOO, IQOI, /goa, by
THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyright, /go/, 1902, by
FRANK LESLIE PUBLISHING HOUSE
Copyright, 181)6, by
H. S. STONB & COMPANY
Copyright, iqoa, by
THE CRITERION PUBLICATION COMPANY
Copyright, IQOZ, by
CHARLES SCRIBNHR'S SONS
Copyright, iqoa, by
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
A II rights reserved
Published, May, 1902
Colonial jprcss
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
So flhv people
Contents of the Booh
ttbe Hnimal StorsO) 15
ttbe /iDoonliQbt Urafte . 33
Ube Xoro of tbe Hit 55
TWlilo flDotberbooo . 93
Ube Utomestcfcness of Itebonfca . . 117
Savoury /IDeat5 143
Ube 3Bo^ an& Htusbwtna . 159
H treason of nature . . .181
dbe f)aunter of tbe pine <3loom . . 199
Ube UOlatcbers of tbe Camp-3ffre . 241
TRnben Uwilidbt falls on tbe Stump
Xots 273
Ube "Ring of tbe nBamoseftel . . . 287
Un panoply of Spears . 349
(') 3nclu6e6 b^ pctmisBion of tbe TUnivenit? Boctctc
H %tet of the
^Drawings in the Book
PAGE
Ube Hnimal Stors . . 13
" THE SNIFFINGS OF THE BAFFLED BEAR OR
TIGER" 17
"THE INSCRUTABLE EYES OF ALL THE CATS" . 25
Ube flDoonliGbt trails 31
"ALL THE PLAYERS WERE MOTIONLESS, WITH
EARS ONE WAY" 37
" IT WAS BEYOND HIS REACH " . . . -49
Ube Oloro of tbe Bit 53
" HE SAW HIS WIDE - WINGED MATE, TOO, LEAVE
THE NEST" 57
" HOLDING THE FISH FIRMLY IN THE CLUTCH OF
ONE GREAT TALON " 65
" HELPLESSLY INTERTANGLED IN THE MESHES " . 79
"THEY FLOCKED BLACKLY ABOUT WITH VITU-
PERATIVE MALICE" . . . . .83
TKHflfc flDotberboob ....... 91
" LED HIS HERD OFF NORTHWARD " . -95
H Xist of tbc ffulUfcage 2>rawin$s
FAGB
"STOOD FOR A MOMENT TO SNIFF THE AIR" . 99
"AROUND ITS RIM CIRCLED THE WARY MOTHER" 105
Ube Siomesicfcness of Ifcebonfca . . us
" HE WOULD STAND MOTIONLESS, HIS COMPACT,
GLOSSY HEAD HIGH IN AIR" . . . .125
" FELL WITH A GREAT SPLASH INTO THE CHAN-
NEL OF THE TANTRAMAR" . . . .133
THE DISCOURAGER OF QUESTS DARTED STEALTH-
ILY FORTH" 137
Savoury flDeats . . . . . .141
"TWO GREEN EYES, CLOSE TO THE GROUND" . 153
Ube Bos ant> Utusbwina *s?
"HE STRUCK THE EMPTY AIR" .... 165
" SETTLED HIMSELF, MUCH DISCONCERTED, ON
THE BACK OF AN OLD HAIRCLOTH SOFA" . i;i
a treason ot mature . . . . .179
"HE GAVE ANSWER AT ONCE TO THE SUMMONS" 187
" STARTED IN MAD HASTE DOWN THE SHORE "
(See page 189) .... Frontispiece
" HE DUG HIS CLAWS DEEPER INTO THE BARK,
AND BARED HIS FANGS THIRSTILY" . . 191
fltaunter of tbe pine (Bloom . . 197
"THE BIG BEAST LITTLE IMAGINED HIMSELF OB-
SERVED" 203
"A GREAT LYNX LANDED ON THE LOG" . . 2O7
"PRESENTLY THE LUCIFEE AROSE AND BEGAN
CREEPING STEALTHILY CLOSER" . . .213
"A SILENT GRAY THUNDERBOLT FELL UPON
HIM" 217
" YAWNED HUGELY, AND STRETCHED HERSELF
LIKE A CAT " . . . . . . . 223
H Xist of tbe jfulUpaae Drawings xi
PAGE
MOUNTED THE CARCASS WITH AN AIR OF LORD-
SHIP" 229
TOlatcbers of tbe Campsite . 239
" HIS BIG, SPREADING PAWS CARRIED HIM OVER
ITS SURFACE AS IF HE HAD BEEN SHOD WITH
SNOW-SHOES" 243
HE PUSHED THE BALL AGAIN, VERY, VERY DELI- '
CATELY" 249
" STOLE NOISELESSLY TOWARD THE SHINING
LOVELY THING" 259
Wben TTwillobt falls on tbe Stump Xots 271
" SHE STRUGGLED STRAIGHT TOWARD THE DEN
THAT HELD HER YOUNG" .... 28l
Ube "Ring of tbe flDamoaefcel . .285
"THE CALF STOOD CLOSE BY, WATCHING WITH
INTEREST" 293
" THE MOTHER MALLARD WOULD FLOAT AMID
HER BROOD" 301
"BUT THEY FELL SHORT OF THEIR INTENDED
MARK" 309
"THICK PILED THE SNOWS ABOUT THE LITTLE
HERD" 319
" WAS OFF THROUGH THE UNDERBRUSH IN IGNO-
MINIOUS FLIGHT" 335
" IT WAS FEAR ITSELF THAT HE WAS WIPING
OUT" 343
1Tn panoplx? of Spears 347
"THE BEAR EYED HIM FOR SOME MOMENTS" . 353
"A WEASEL GLIDED NOISELESSLY UP TO THE
DOOR OF THE DEN " 369
WL STORY
Ebe
of tbe Milb
1Introbuctor\>
animal Stor\>
[LIKE in matter and in method, the animal
story, as we have it to-day, may be re-
garded as a culmination. The animal
story, of course, in one form or another, is as
old as the beginnings of literature. Perhaps the
most engrossing part in the life-drama of prim-
itive man was that played by the beasts which he
hunted, and by those which hunted him. They
pressed incessantly upon his perceptions. They
furnished both material and impulse for his first
gropings toward pictorial art. When he acquired
the kindred art of telling a story, they supplied his
earliest themes; and they suggested the hieroglyphs
by means of which, on carved bone or painted rock,
15
16 ttbe fanorefc of tbe TOUU>
he first gave his narrative a form to outlast the
spoken breath. We may not unreasonably infer
that the first animal story the remote but au-
thentic ancestor of " Mowgli " and " Lobo " and
" Krag " was a story of some successful hunt,
when success meant life to the starving family; or
of some desperate escape, when the truth of the
narrative was attested, to the hearers squatted
trembling about their fire, by the sniffings of the
baffled bear or tiger at the rock-barred mouth of
the cave. Such first animal stories had at least one
merit of prime literary importance. They were
convincing. The first critic, however supercilious,
would be little likely to cavil at their verisimilitude.
Somewhat later, when men had begun to harass
their souls, and their neighbours, with problems of
life and conduct, then these same animals, hourly
and in every aspect thrust beneath the eyes of
their observation, served to point the moral of their
tales. The beasts, not being in a position to resent
the ignoble office thrust upon them, were compelled
to do duty as concrete types of those obvious vir-
tues and vices of which alone the unsophisticated
ethical sense was ready to take cognisance. In this
way, as soon as composition became a metier, was
born the fable ; and in this way the ingenuity of the
"THE SNIFFINGS OF THE BAFFLED BEAR OR TIGER."
Ube Hnimal Stors 19
first author enabled him to avoid a perilous unpop-
ularity among those whose weaknesses and defects
his art held up to the scorn of all the caves.
These earliest observers of animal life were com-
pelled by the necessities of the case to observe truly,
if not deeply. Pitting their wits against those of
their four-foot rivals, they had to know their an-
tagonists, and respect them, in order to overcome
them. But it was only the most salient character-
istics of each species that concerned the practical
observer. It was simple to remember that the tiger
was cruel, the fox cunning, the wolf rapacious.
And so, as advancing civilisation drew an ever
widening line between man and the animals, and
men became more and more engrossed in the inter-
ests of their own kind, the personalities of the wild
creatures which they had once known so well be-
came obscured to them, and the creatures them-
selves came to be regarded, for the purposes of
literature, as types or symbols merely, except
in those cases, equally obstructive to exact observa-
tion, where they were revered as temporary tene-
ments of the spirits of departed kinsfolk. The
characters in that great beast-epic of the middle
ages, " Reynard the Fox," though far more elab-
orately limned than those which play their succinct
20 Ube Ifcinbreo of tbe
roles in the fables of ^Esop, are at the same time
in their elaboration far more alien to the truths of
wild nature. Reynard, Isegrim, Bruin, and Grey-
beard have little resemblance to the fox, the wolf,
the bear, and the badger, as patience, sympathy, and
the camera reveal them to us to-day.
The advent of Christianity, strange as it may
seem at first glance, did not make for a closer
understanding between man and the lower animals.
While it was militant, fighting for its life against
the forces of paganism, its effort was to set man at
odds with the natural world, and fill his eyes with
the wonders of the spiritual. Man was the only
thing of consequence on earth, and of man, not his
body, but his soul. Nature was the ally of the
enemy. The way of nature was the way of death.
In man alone was the seed of the divine. Of what
concern could be the joy or pain of creatures of no
soul, to-morrow returning to the dust? To strenu-
ous spirits, their eyes fixed upon the fear of hell
for themselves, and the certainty of it for their
neighbours, it smacked of sin to take thought of
the feelings of such evanescent products of cor-
ruption. Hence it came that, in spite of the gentle
understanding of such sweet saints as Francis of
Assisi, Anthony of Padua, and Colomb of the Bees,
Ube animal Stors 21
the inarticulate kindred for a long time reaped small
comfort from the Dispensation of Love.
With the spread of freedom and the broadening
out of all intellectual interests which characterise
these modern days, the lower kindreds began to
regain their old place in the concern of man. The
revival of interest in the animals found literary
expression (to classify roughly) in two forms,
which necessarily overlap each other now and then,
viz., the story of adventure and the anecdote of
observation. Hunting as a recreation, pursued with
zest from pole to tropics by restless seekers after
the new, supplied a species of narrative singularly
akin to what the first animal stories must have been,
narratives of desperate encounter, strange peril,
and hairbreadth escape. Such hunters' stories and
travellers' tales are rarely conspicuous for the exact-
itude of their observation; but that was not the
quality at first demanded of them by fireside readers.
The attention of the writer was focussed, not upon
the peculiarities or the emotions of the beast pro-
tagonist in each fierce, brief drama, but upon the
thrill of the action, the final triumph of the human
actor. The inevitable tendency of these stories of
adventure with beasts was to awaken interest in
animals, and to excite a desire for exact knowledge
22 TTbe lifn&re& of tbe TWUU>
of their traits and habits. The interest and the
desire evoked the natural historian, the inheritor of
the half-forgotten mantle of Pliny. Precise and
patient scientists made the animals their care, ob-
serving with microscope and measure, comparing
bones, assorting families, subdividing subdivisions,
till at length all the beasts of significance to man
were ticketed neatly, and laid bare, as far as the
inmost fibre of their material substance was con-
cerned, to the eye of popular information.
Altogether admirable and necessary as was this
development at large, another, of richer or at least
more spiritual significance, was going on at home.
Folk who loved their animal comrades their dogs,
horses, cats, parrots, elephants were observ-
ing, with the wonder and interest of discoverers,
the astonishing fashion in which the mere instincts
of these so-called irrational creatures were able to
simulate the operations of reason. The results of
this observation were written down, till " anecdotes
of animals " came to form a not inconsiderable body
of literature. The drift of all these data was over-
whelmingly toward one conclusion. The mental
processes of the animals observed were seen to be
far more complex than the observers had supposed.
Where instinct was called in to account for the elab-
Hntmal Stors 23
orate ingenuity with which a dog would plan and
accomplish the outwitting of a rival, or the nice
judgment with which an elephant, with no nest-
building ancestors behind him to instruct his brain,
would choose and adjust the teak-logs which he was
set to pile, it began to seem as if that faithful
faculty was being overworked. To explain yet
other cases, which no accepted theory seemed to fit,
coincidence was invoked, till that rare and elusive
phenomenon threatened to become as customary
as buttercups. But when instinct and coincidence
had done all that could be asked of them, there re-
mained a great unaccounted-for body of facts ; and
men were forced at last to accept the proposition
that, within their varying limitations, animals can
and do reason. As far, at least, as the mental
intelligence is concerned, the gulf dividing the lowest
of the human species from the highest of the animals
has in these latter days been reduced to a very
narrow psychological fissure.
Whether avowedly or not, it is with the psy-
chology of animal life that the representative animal
stories of to-day are first of all concerned. Looking
deep into the eyes of certain of the four-footed
kindred, we have been startled to see therein a some-
thing, before unrecognised, that answered to our
24 Ube Tkinfcrefc of tbe
inner and intellectual, if not spiritual selves. We
have suddenly attained a new and clearer vision.
We have come face to face with personality, where
we were blindly wont to predicate mere instinct and
automatism. It is as if one should step carelessly
out of one's back door, and marvel to see unrolling
before his new-awakened eyes the peaks and seas
and misty valleys of an unknown world. Our chief
writers of animal stories at the present day may be
regarded as explorers of this unknown world,
absorbed in charting its topography. They
work, indeed, upon a substantial foundation of
known facts. They are minutely scrupulous as to
their natural history, and assiduous contributors to
that science. But above all are they diligent in their
search for the motive beneath the action. Their
care is to catch the varying, elusive personalities
which dwell back of the luminous brain windows
of the dog, the horse, the deer, or wrap themselves
in reserve behind the inscrutable eyes of all the cats,
or sit aloof in the gaze of the hawk and the eagle.
The animal story at its highest point of develop-
ment is a psychological romance constructed on a
framework of natural science.
The real psychology of the animals, so far as we
are able to grope our way toward it by deduction
tlbe animal Stor? 27
and induction combined, is a very different thing
from the psychology of certain stories of animals
which paved the way for the present vogue. Of
these, such books as " Beautiful Joe " and " Black
Beauty " are deservedly conspicuous examples. It
is no detraction from the merit of these books, which
have done great service in awakening a sympathetic
understanding of the animals and sharpening our
sense of kinship with all that breathe, to say that
their psychology is human. Their animal charac-
ters think and feel as human beings would think
and feel under like conditions. This marks the
stage which these works occupy in the development
of the animal story.
The next stage must be regarded as, in literature,
a climax indeed, but not the climax in this genre.
I refer to the " Mowgli " stories of Mr. Kipling.
In these tales the animals are frankly humanised.
Their individualisation is distinctly human, as are
also their mental and emotional processes, and their
highly elaborate powers of expression. Their no-
tions are complex; whereas the motives of real
animals, so far as we have hitherto been able to
judge them, seem to be essentially simple, in the
sense that the motive dominant at a given moment
quite obliterates, for the time, all secondary motives.
28 Ube Itfnoreo of tbe TKHtU>
Their reasoning powers and their constructive
imagination are far beyond anything which present
knowledge justifies us in ascribing to the inarticulate
kindreds. To say this is in no way to depreciate
such work, but merely to classify it. There are
stories being written now which, for interest and
artistic value, are not to be mentioned in the same
breath with the " Mowgli " tales, but which never-
theless occupy a more advanced stage in the evolu-
tion of this genre.
It seems to me fairly safe to say that this evolu-
tion is not likely to go beyond the point to which
it has been carried to-day. In such a story, for
instance, as that of " Krag, the Kootenay Ram," by
Mr. Ernest Seton, the interest centres about the per-
sonality, individuality, mentality, of an animal, as
well as its purely physical characteristics. The field
of animal psychology so admirably opened is an
inexhaustible world of wonder. Sympathetic ex-
ploration may advance its boundaries to a degree of
which we hardly dare to dream ; but such expansion
cannot be called evolution. There would seem to
be no further evolution possible, unless based upon
a hypothesis that animals have souls. As souls
are apt to elude exact observation, to forecast any
such development would seem to be at best merely
fanciful.
Hnimal Stors 29
The animal story, as we now have it, is a potent
emancipator. It frees us for a little from the world
of shop-worn utilities, and from the mean tenement
of self of which we do well to grow weary. It helps
us to return to nature, without requiring that we at
the same time return to barbarism. It leads us back
to the old kinship of earth, without asking us to
relinquish by way of toll any part of the wisdom
of the ages, any fine essential of the " large result
of time." The clear and candid life to which it re-
initiates us, far behind though it lies in the long
upward march of being, holds for us this quality.
It has ever the more significance, it has ever the
richer gift of refreshment and renewal, the more
humane the heart and spiritual the understanding
which we bring to the intimacy of it.
was no wind. The young fir-
trees stood up straight and tall and stiffly
pointed from the noiseless white levels
of the snow. The blue-white moon of midwinter,
sharply glittering like an icicle, hung high in a
heaven clear as tempered steel.
The young fir-trees were a second growth, on
lands once well cleared, but afterward reclaimed by
the forest. They rose in serried phalanxes, with
here and there a solitary sentinel of spruce, and
here and there a little huddling group of yellow
birches. The snow-spaces between formed spark-
ling alleys, and long, mysterious vistas, expanding
frequently into amphitheatres of breathless stillness
and flooding radiance. There was no trace of that
most ghostly and elusive winter haze which repre-
sents the fine breathing of the forest. Rather the
air seemed like diamonds held in solution, fluent as
by miracle, and not without strange peril to be
jarred by sound or motion.
33
34 ttbe ittnoreo of tbe
Yet presently the exaggerated tension of the
stillness was broken, and no disaster followed. Two
small, white, furry shapes came leaping, one behind
the other, down a corridor of radiance, as lightly
as if a wind were lifting and drifting them. It
was as if some of the gentler spirits of the winter
and the wild had seized the magic hour for an
incarnation. Leaping at gay leisure, their little
bodies would lengthen out to a span of nearly three
feet, then round themselves together so that the
soft pads of their hinder paws would touch the
snow within a couple of inches of the prints from
which their fore paws were even then starting to
rise. The trail thus drawn down the white aisle
consisted of an orderly succession of close tripli-
cate bunches of footprints, like no other trail of the
wild folk. From time to time the two harmonious
shapes would halt, sit up on their hindquarters, erect
their long, attentive ears, glance about warily with
their bulging eyes which, in this position, could see
behind as well as in front of their narrow heads,
wrinkle those cleft nostrils which were cunning
to differentiate every scent upon the sharp air, and
then browse hastily but with a cheerful relish at
the spicy shoots of the young yellow birch. Feed-
ing, however, was plainly not their chief purpose.
/iDoonlisbt Zlrails 35
Always within a few moments they would resume
their leaping progress through the white glitter and
the hard, black shadows.
Very soon their path led them out into a wide
glade, fenced all about with the serried and formal
ranks of the young firs. It seemed as if the blue-
white moon stared down into this space with a
glassiness of brilliance even more deluding and
magical than elsewhere. The snow here was crossed
by a tangle of th'e fine triplicate tracks. Doubling
upon themselves in all directions and with obvious
irresponsibility, they were evidently the trails of
play rather than of business or of flight. Their
pattern was the pattern of mirth ; and some half
dozen wild white rabbits were gaily weaving at it
when the two newcomers joined them. Long ears
twinkling, round eyes softly shining, they leaped
lightly hither and thither, pausing every now and
then to touch each other with their sensitive noses,
or to pound on the snow with their strong hind legs
in mock challenge. It seemed to be the play of
care-free children, almost a kind of confused dance,
a spontaneous expression of the joy of life. Never-
theless, for all the mirth of it, there was never a
moment when two or more of the company were
not to be seen sitting erect, with watchful ears and
36
eyes, close in the shadow of the young fir-trees.
For the night that was so favourable to the wild
rabbits was favourable also to the fox, the wildcat,
and the weasel. And death stalks joy forever
among the kindred of the wild.
From time to time one or another of the leaping
players would take himself off through the fir-trees,
while others continued to arrive along the moon-
light trails. This went on till the moon had swung
perhaps an hour's distance on her shining course;
then, suddenly it stopped; and just for a fleeting
fraction of a breath all the players were motionless,
with ears one way. From one or another of the
watchers there had come some signal, swift, but to
the rabbits instantly clear. No onlooker not of
the cleft-nose, long-ear clan could have told in what
the signal consisted, or what was its full signifi-
cance. But whatever it was, in a moment the players
were gone, vanishing to the east and west and
south, all at once, as if blown off by a mighty breath.
Only toward the north side of the open there went
not one.
Nevertheless, the moon, peering down with sharp
scrutiny into the unshadowed northern fringes of
the open, failed to spy out any lurking shape of
fox, wildcat, or weasel. Whatever the form in
"ALL THE PLAYERS WERE MOTIONLESS, WITH EARS ONE WAY."
/iDoonliobt Urails 39
which fate had approached, it chose not to unmask
its menace. Thereafter, for an hour or more, the
sparkling glade with its woven devices was empty.
Then, throughout the rest of the night, an occa-
sional rabbit would go bounding across it hastily,
on affairs intent, and paying no heed to its signifi-
cant hieroglyphs. And once, just before moon-set,
came a large red fox and sniffed about the tangled
trails with an interest not untinged with scorn.
n.
The young fir wood covered a tract of poor land
some miles in width, between the outskirts of the
ancient forest and a small settlement known as
Far Bazziley. In the best house of Far Bazziley
that of the parish clergyman there lived a boy
whom chance, and the capricious destiny of the
wild folk, led to take a sudden lively interest in
the moonlight trails. Belonging to a different class
from the other children of the settlement, he was
kept from the district school and tutored at home,
with more or less regularity, by his father. His
lesson hours, as a rule, fell when the other boys
were busy at their chores and it was the tradition
of Far Bazziley that boys were born to work, not
play. Thus it happened that the boy had little
of the companionship of his fellows.
4 Ube frtnfcrefc ot tbe 7HHU&
Being of too eager and adventurous a spirit to
spend much of his leisure in reading, he was thrown
upon his own resources, and often found himself
hungry for new interests. Animals he loved, and
of all cruelty toward them he was fiercely intolerant.
Great or small, it hurt him to see them hurt; and
he was not slow to resent and resist that kind of
discomfort.
On more than one occasion he had thrashed other
boys of the settlement for torturing, with boyish
playfulness and ingenuity, superfluous kittens which
thrifty housewives had confided to them to drown.
These rough interferences with custom did him no
harm, for the boys were forced to respect his prow-
ess, and they knew well enough that kittens had
some kind of claim upon civilisation. But when it
came to his overbearing championship of snakes,
that was another matter, and he made himself un-
popular. It was rank tyranny, and disgustingly
unnatural, if they could not crush a snake's back
with stones and then lay it out in the sun to die
gradually, without the risk of getting a black eye
and bloodied nose for it.
It was in vain the boy explained, on the incon-
trovertible authority of his father, that the brilliant
garter-snake, the dainty little green snake, and
Ube /iDoonlfsbt trails 41
indeed all the snakes of the neighbourhood without
exception, were as harmless as lady-bugs. A snake
was a snake; and in the eyes of Far Bazziley to
kill one, with such additions of painfulness in the
process as could be devised on the moment, was
to obey Biblical injunction. The boy, not unnatu-
rally, was thrust more and more into the lonely
* Y*
eminence of his isolation.
But one unfailing resource he had always with
him, and that was the hired man. His mother might
be, as she usually was, too absorbed in household
cares to give adequate heed to his searching interro-
gations. His father might spend huge blanks of
his time in interminable drives to outlying parts
of his parish. But the hired man was always at
hand. It was not always the same hired man. But
whether his name were Bill of Tom, Henry or Mart
or Chris, the boy found that he could safely look
for some uniformity of characteristics, and that
he could depend upon each in turn for some teaching
that seemed to him more practical and timely than
equations or the conjugation of nolo, nolle, nolui.
At this particular time of the frequenting of
the moonlight trails, the boy was unusually fortu-
nate in his hired man. The latter was a boyish,
enthusiastic fellow, by the name of Andy, who had
4* Ubc frtufcreo of tbc Milo
an interest in the kind of things which the boy
held important. One morning as he was helping
Andy with the barn work, the man said:
" It's about full moon now, and right handy
weather for rabbit-snarin'. What say if we git
off to the woods this afternoon, if your fatherll
let us, an' set some snares fer to-night, afore a
new snow comes and spiles the tracks ? "
The silent and mysterious winter woods, the
shining spaces of the snow marked here and there
with strange footprints leading to unknown lairs,
the clear glooms, the awe and the sense of unseen
presences these were what came thronging into
the boy's mind at Andy's suggestion. All the won-
derful possibilities of it ! The wild spirit of adven-
ture, the hunting zest of elemental man, stirred in
his veins at the idea. Had he seen a rabbit being
hurt he would have rushed with indignant pity
to the rescue. But the idea of rabbit-snaring, as
presented by Andy's exciting words, fired a side
of his imagination so remote from pity as to have
no communication with it whatever along the nerves
of sympathy or association. He was a vigorous and
normal boy, and the jewel of consistency (which is
usually paste) was therefore of as little consequence
to him as to the most enlightened of his elders. He
Ube flDoonltgbt trails 43
threw himself with fervour into Andy's scheme,
plied him with exhaustive questions as to the
methods of making and setting snares, and spent
the rest of the morning, under direction, in whit-
tling with his pocket-knife the required uprights
and cross-pieces, and twisting the deadly nooses
of fine copper wire. In the prime of the afternoon
the two, on their snowshoes, set off gaily for the
wood of the young fir-trees.
Up the long slope of the snowy pasture lots,
where the drifted hillocks sparkled crisply, and the
black stumps here and there broke through in sug-
gestive, fantastic shapes, and the gray rampikes
towered bleakly to the upper air, the two climbed
with brisk steps, the dry cold a tonic to nerve and
vein. As they entered the fir woods a fine, bal-
samy tang breathed up to greet them, and the
boy's nostrils took eager note of it.
The first tracks to meet their eyes were the
delicate footprints of the red squirrel, ending
abruptly at the foot of a tree somewhat larger than
its fellows. Then the boy's sharp eyes marked a
trail very slender and precise small, clear dots
one after the other; and he had a feeling of pro-
tective tenderness to the maker of that innocent
little trail, till Andy told him that he of the dainty
44 Ube ltfn&reo of tbc Wilfc
footprints was the bloodthirsty and indomitable
weasel, the scourge of all the lesser forest kin.
The weasel's trail led them presently to another
track, consisting of those triplicate clusters of prints,
dropped lightly and far apart; and Andy said,
"Rabbits! and the weasel's after them!" The
words made a swift picture in the boy's imagina-
tion; and he never forgot the trail of the wild
rabbit or the trail of the weasel.
Crossing these tracks, they soon came to one
more beaten, along which it was plain that many
rabbits had fared. This they followed, one going
on either side of it that it might not be obliterated
by the broad trail of their snowshoes; and in a
little time it led them out upon the sheltered glade
whereon the merrymakers of the night before had
held their revels.
In the unclouded downpour of the sunlight the
tracks stood forth with emphasised distinctness,
a melting, vapourous violet against the gold-white of
the snowy surface; and to the boy's eyes, though,
not to the man's, was revealed a formal and intricate
pattern in the tangled markings. To Andy it was
incomprehensible; but he saw at once that in the
ways leading to the open it would be well to plant
the snares. The boy, on the other hand, had a
Ube flDoonligbt Urails 45
keener insight, and exclaimed at once, " What fun
they must have been having! " But his sympathy
was asleep. Nothing, at that moment, could wake
it up so far as to make him realise the part he was
about to play toward those childlike revellers of
the moonlight trails.
Skirting the glade, and stepping carefully over
the trails, they proceeded to set their snares at
the openings of three of the main alleys; and for
a little while the strokes of their hatchets rang out
frostily on the still air as they chopped down fra-
grant armfuls of the young fir branches.
Each of the three snares was set in this fashion:
First they stuck the fir branches into the snow to
form a thick green fence on both sides of the trail,
with a passage only wide enough for one rabbit
at a time to pass through. On each side of this
passageway they drove securely a slender stake,
notched on the inner face. Over the opening they
bent down a springy sapling, securing its top, by
a strong cord, to a small wooden cross-piece which
was caught and held in the notches of the two up-
rights. From the under side of this cross-piece was
suspended the easy-running noose of copper wire,
just ample enough for a rabbit's head, with the
ears lying back, to enter readily.
46 ttbe IkinOrct) ot tbe
By the time the snares were set it was near sun-
down, and the young fir-trees were casting long,
pointed, purple shadows. With the drawing on
of evening the boy felt stirrings of a wild, predatory
instinct. His skin tingled with a still excitement
which he did not understand, and he went with a
fierce yet furtive wariness, peering into the shadows
as if for prey. As he and Andy emerged from the
woods, and strode silently down the desolate slopes
of the pasture lots, he could think of nothing but
his return on the morrow to see what prizes had
fallen to his snares. His tenderness of heart, his
enlightened sympathy with the four-footed kin-
dred, much of his civilisation, in fact, had vanished
for the moment, burnt out in the flame of an instinct
handed down to him from his primeval ancestors.
in.
That night the moon rose over the young fir
woods, blue-white and glittering as on the night
before. The air was of the same biting stillness
and vitreous transparency. The magic of it stirred
up the same merry madness in the veins of the
wild rabbits, and set them to aimless gambolling
instead of their usual cautious browsing in the
thickets of yellow birch. One by one and two by
Ube ADoonltgbt ZTrails 47
two the white shapes came drifting down the
shadowed alleys and moonlight trails of the fir
wood toward the bright glade which they seemed
to have adopted, for the time, as their playground.
The lanes and ways were many that gave entrance
to the glade ; and presently some half dozen rabbits
came bounding, from different directions, across
the radiant open. But on the instant they stopped
and sat straight up on their haunches, ears erect,
struck with consternation.
There at the mouth of one of the alleys a white
form jerked high into the air. It hung, silently
struggling, whirling round and round, and at the
same time swaying up and down with the bending of
the sapling-top from which it swung. The startled
spectators had no comprehension of the sight, no
signal-code to express the kind of peril it portended,
and how to flee from it. They sat gazing in terror.
Then, at the next entrance, there shot up into the
brilliant air another like horror; and at the next,
in the same breath, another. The three hung kicking
in a hideous silence.
The spell was broken. The spectators, trembling
under the imminence of a doom which they could
not understand, vanished with long bounds by the
opposite side of the glade. All was still again
lttn&re& of tbe WfU>
under the blue-white, wizard scrutiny of the moon
but those three kicking shapes. And these, too, in
a few minutes hung motionless as the fir-trees and
the snow. As the glassy cold took hold upon them
they slowly stiffened.
About an hour later a big red fox came trotting
into the glade. The hanging shapes caught his
eye at once. He knew all about snares, being an
old fox, for years at odds with the settlement of
Far Bazziley. Casting a sharp glance about, he
trotted over to the nearest snare and sniffed up
desirously toward the white rabbit dangling above
him. It was beyond his reach, and one unavailing
spring convinced him of the fact. The second
hung equally remote. But with the third he was
more fortunate. The sapling was slender, and
drooped its burden closer to the snow. With an
easy leap the fox seized the dangling body, dragged
it down, gnawed off its head to release the noose,
and bore away the spoils in triumph, conscious of
having scored against his human rivals in the
hunt.
Late in the morning, when the sun was pale in
a sky that threatened snowfall, the boy and Andy
came, thrilling with anticipation, to see what the
snares had captured. At the sight of the first
IT WAS BEYOND HIS REACH.'
Ube flDoonliQbt ZTrails S 1
victim, the stiff, furry body hanging in the air
from the bowed top of the sapling, the boy's nerves
tingled with a novel and fierce sense of triumph.
His heart leapt, his eyes flamed, and he sprang
forward, with a little cry, as a young beast might
in sighting its first quarry. His companion, long
used to the hunter's enthusiasm, was less excited.
He went to the next snare, removed the victim,
reset the catch and noose; while the boy, slinging
his trophy over his shoulder with the air of a vet-
eran (as he had seen it done in pictures), hastened
on to the third to see why it had failed him. To
his untrained eye the trampled snow, the torn head,
and the blood spots told the story in part; and as
he looked a sense of the tragedy of it began to stir
achingly at the roots of his heart. " A fox," re-
marked Andy, in a matter-of-fact voice, coming up
at the moment, with his prize hanging rigidly, by
the pathetically babyish hind legs, from the grasp
of his mittened fist.
The boy felt a spasm of indignation against the
fox. Then, turning his gaze upon Andy's capture,
he was struck by the cruel marks of the noose under
its jaws and behind its ears. He saw, for the
first time, the half-open mouth, the small, jutting
tongue, the expression of the dead eyes; and his
5* Ube fttn&refc of tbe
face changed. He removed his own trophy from
his shoulder and stared at it for some moments.
Then two big tears rolled over his ruddy cheeks.
With an angry exclamation he flung the dead rabbit
down on the snow and ran to break up the snares.
" We won't snare any more rabbits, Andy," he
cried, averting his face, and starting homeward with
a dogged set to his shoulders. Andy, picking up
the rejected spoils with a grin that was half be-
wilderment, half indulgent comprehension, philo-
sophically followed the penitent.
Xort) of tbe Hit
i
i HE chill glitter of the northern summer
sunrise was washing down over the
rounded top of old Sugar Loaf. The
sombre and solitary peak, bald save for a ragged
veil of blueberry and juniper scrub, seemed to
topple over the deep enshadowed valley at its
foot. The valley was brimmed with crawling
vapours, and around its rim emerged spectrally
the jagged crests of the fir wood. On either side
of the shrouded valley, to east and west, stretched
a chain of similar basins, but more ample, and less
deeply wrapped in mist. From these, where the
vapours had begun to lift, came radiances of unruf-
fled water.
Where the peak leaned to the valley, the trunk
of a giant pine jutted forth slantingly from a
roothold a little below the summit. Its top had
long ago been shattered by lightning and hurled
away into the depths; but from a point some ten
or twelve feet below the fracture, one gaunt limb
55
ltfn&reo of tbe mtlo
still waved green with persistent, indomitable life.
This bleached stub, thrust out over the vast basin,
hummed about by the untrammelled winds, was the
watch-tower of the great bald eagle who ruled
supreme over all the aerial vicinage of the Squatooks.
When the earliest of the morning light fell palely
on the crest of Sugar Loaf, the great eagle came
to his watch-tower, leaving the nest on the other
side of the peak, where the two nestlings had begun
to stir hungrily at the first premonition of dawn.
Launching majestically from the edge of the nest,
he had swooped down into the cold shadow, then,
rising into the light by a splendid spiral, with muf-
fled resonance of wing-stroke, he had taken a survey
of the empty, glimmering world. It was still quite
too dark for hunting, down there on earth, hungry
though the nestlings were. He soared, and soared,
till presently he saw his wide-winged mate, too,
leave the nest, and beat swiftly off toward the Tuladi
Lakes, her own special hunting-grounds. Then he
dropped quietly to his blanched pine-top on the
leaning side of the summit.
Erect and moveless he sat in the growing light,
his snowy, flat-crowned head thrust a little forward,
consciously lord of the air. His powerful beak,
long and scythe-edged, curved over sharply at the
Ube %oro of tbc Hit 59
end in a rending hook. His eyes, clear, direct,
unacquainted with iear, had a certain hardness in
their vitreous brilliancy, perhaps by reason of the
sharp contrast between the bright gold iris and
the unfathomable pupil, and the straight line of
the low overhanging brow gave them a savage
intensity of penetration. His neck and tail were
of the same snowy whiteness as his snake-like head,
while the rest of his body was a deep, shadowy
brown, close kin to black.
Suddenly, far, far down, winging swiftly in a
straight line through the topmost fold of the mist
drift, he saw a duck flying from one lake to
another. The errand of the duck was probably an
unwonted one, of some special urgency, or he
would not have flown so high and taken the straight
route over the forest; for at this season the duck
of inland waters is apt to fly low and follow the
watercourse. However that may be, he had for-
gotten the piercing eyes that kept watch from the
peak of old Sugar Loaf.
The eagle lifted and spread the sombre amplitude
of his wings, and glided from his perch in a long
curve, till he balanced above the unconscious voy-
ager. Then down went his head; his wings shut
close, his feathers hardened till he was like a wedge
6o Ube Idnorefc of tbe
of steel, and down he shot with breathless, appalling
speed. But the duck was travelling fast, and the
great eagle saw that the mere speed of dropping
like a thunderbolt was insufficient for his purpose.
Two or three quick, short, fierce thrusts of his
pinions, and the speed of his descent was more than
doubled. The duck heard an awful hissing in the
air above him. But before he could swerve* to look
up he was struck, whirled away, blotted out of life.
Carried downward with his quarry by the rush
of his descent, the eagle spread his pinions and rose
sharply just before he reached the nearest tree-tops.
High he mounted on still wings with that tremen-
dous impulse. Then, as the impulse failed, his
wings began to flap strongly, and he flew off with
business-like directness toward the eyrie on the other
slope of Sugar Loaf. The head and legs of the
duck hung limply from the clutch of his talons.
The nest was a seemingly haphazard collection
of sticks, like a hay-cart load of rubbish, deposited
on a ledge of the mountainside. In reality, every
stick in the structure had been selected with care,
and so adeptly fitted that the nest stood unshaken
beneath the wildest storms that swept old Sugar
Loaf. The ground below the ledge was strewn
with the faggots and branches which the careful
Ube Xorfc of tbe Hit 61
builders had rejected. The nest had the appear-
ance of being merely laid upon the ledge, but in
reality its foundations were firmly locked into a
ragged crevice which cleft the ledge at that point.
As the eagle drew near with his prey, he saw
his mate winging heavily from the Tuladis, a large
fish hanging from her talons. They met at the
nest's edge, and two heavy-bodied, soot-coloured,
half-fledged nestlings, with wings half spread in
eagerness, thrust up hungry, gaping beaks to greet
them. The fish, as being the choicer morsel, was
first torn to fragments and fed to these greedy
beaks; and the duck followed in a few moments,
the young ones gulping their meal with grotesque
contortions and ecstatic liftings of their wings.
Being already much more than half the size of
their parents, and growing almost visibly, and ex-
pending vast vitality in the production of their
first feathers, their appetites were prodigious. Not
until these appetites seemed to be, for the moment,
stayed, and the eaglets sank back contentedly upon
the nest, did the old birds fly off to forage for
themselves, leaving a bloody garniture of bones
and feathers upon the threshold of their home.
The king who, though smaller than his mate,
was her lord by virtue of superior initiative and
62 ube frtnoreo of tbe
more assured, equable daring returned at once
to his watch-tower on the lake side of the sum-
mit. It had become his habit to initiate every
enterprise from that starting-point. Perching mo-
tionless for a few minutes, he surveyed the whole
wide landscape of the Squatook Lakes, with the
great waters of Lake Temiscouata gleaming to the
northwest, and the peak of Bald Mountain, old
Sugar Loaf's rival, lifting a defiant front from the
shores of Nictau Lake, far to the south.
The last wisp of vapour had vanished, drunk
up by the rising sun, and the eagle's eye had clear
command of every district of his realm. It was
upon the little lake far below him that his interest
presently centred itself. There, at no great height
above the unruffled waters, he saw a fish-hawk sail-
ing, now tilted to one side or the other on moveless
wing, now flapping hurriedly to another course, as
if he were scrupulously quartering the whole lake
surface.
The king recognised with satisfaction the dili-
gence of this, the most serviceable, though most
unwilling, of his subjects. In leisurely fashion
he swung off from his perch, and presently was
whirling in slow spirals directly over the centre of
the lake. Up, up he mounted, till he was a mere
Xorfc of tbe Htr $3
speck in the blue, and seemingly oblivious of all
that went on below; but, as he wheeled, there in
his supreme altitude, his grim white head was
stretched ever earthward, and his eyes lost no detail
of the fish-hawk's diligence.
All at once, the fish-hawk was seen to poise on
steady wing. Then his wings closed, and he shot
downward like a javelin. The still waters of the
lake were broken with a violent splash, and the
fish-hawk's body for a moment almost disappeared.
Then, with a struggle and a heavy flapping of
wings, the daring fisher arose, grasping in his vic-
torious claws a large " togue " or gray lake trout.
He rose till he was well above the tree-tops of the
near-by shore, and then headed for his nest in the
cedar swamp.
This was the moment for which the eagle had
been waiting, up in the blue. Again his vast wings
folded themselves. Again his plumage hardened
to a wedge of steel. Again he dropped like a
plummet. But this time he had no slaughterous
intent. He was merely descending out of the
heavens to take tribute. Before he reached the
hurrying fish-hawk he swerved upward, steadied
himself, and flapped a menacing wing in the fish-
hawk's face, heading it out again toward the centre
of the lake.
$4 tlbe 1fcin&ret> of tbe
Frightened, angry, and obstinate, the big hawk
clutched his prize the closer, and made futile efforts
to reach the tree-tops. But, fleet though he was,
he was no match for the fleetness of his master.
The great eagle was over him, under him, around
him, all at once, yet never striking him. The king
was simply indicating, quite unmistakably, his
pleasure, which was that the fish should be delivered
up.
Suddenly, however, seeing that the fish-hawk
was obstinate, the eagle lost patience. It was time,
he concluded, to end the folly. He had no wish to
harm the fish-hawk, a most useful creature, and
none too abundant for his kingly needs. In fact,
he was always careful not to exact too heavy a
tribute from the industrious fisherman, lest the latter
should grow discouraged and remove to freer
waters. Of the spoils of his fishing the big hawk
was always allowed to keep enough to satisfy the
requirements of himself and his nestlings. But
it was necessary that there should be no foolish
misunderstanding on the subject.
The eagle swung away, wheeled sharply with an
ominous, harsh rustling of stiffened feathers, and
then came at the -hawk with a yelp and a sudden
tremendous rush. His beak was half open. His
ZTbe %ort> ot tbe Hlr 6 7
great talons were drawn forward and extended for
a deadly stroke. His wings darkened broadly over
the fugitive. His sound, his shadow, they were
doom itself, annihilation to the frightened hawk.
But that deadly stroke was not delivered. The
threat was enough. Shrinking aside with a scream
the fish-hawk opened his claws, and the trout fell,
a gleaming bar of 'silver in the morning light. On
the instant the eagle half closed his wings, tilted
sideways, and swooped. He did not drop, as he
had descended upon the voyaging duck, but with
a peculiar shortened wing-stroke, he flew straight
downward for perhaps a hundred feet. Then,
with this tremendous impulse driving him, he shot
down like lightning, caught the fish some twenty
feet above the water, turned, and rose in a long,
magnificent slant, with the tribute borne in his
talons. He sailed away majestically to his watch-
tower on old Sugar Loaf, to make his meal at
leisure, while the ruffled hawk beat away rapidly
down the river to try his luck in the lower lake.
Holding the fish firmly in the clutch of one great
talon, the eagle tore it to pieces and swallowed it
with savage haste. Then he straightened himself,
twisted and stretched his neck once or twice, set-
tled back into erect and tranquil dignity, and swept
68 ube -fcinOrefc of tbe Kflito
a kingly glance over all his domain, from the far
head of Big Squatook, to the alder-crowded outlet
of Fourth Lake. He saw unmoved the fish-hawk
capture another prize, and fly off with it in triumph
to his hidden nest in the swamp. He saw two
more ducks winging their way from a sheltered
cove to a wide, green reed-bed at the head of the
thoroughfare. Being a right kingly monarch, he
had no desire to trouble them. Untainted by the
lust of killing, he killed only when the need was
upon him.
Having preened himself with some care, polished
his great beak on the dry wood of the stub, and
stretched each wing, deliberately and slowly, the
one after the other, with crisp rustling noises, till
each strong-shanked plume tingled pleasantly in its
socket and fitted with the utmost nicety to its over-
lapping fellows, he bethought him once more of the
appetites of his nestlings. There were no more
industrious fish-hawks in sight. Neither hare nor
grouse was stirring in the brushy opens. No living
creatures were visible save a pair of loons chasing
each other off the point of Sugar Loaf Island, and
an Indian in his canoe just paddling down to the
outlet to spear suckers.
The eagle knew that the loons were no concern
%orfc of tbe Hit 69
of his. They were never to be caught napping.
They could dive quicker than he could swoop and
strike. The Indian also he knew, and from long
experience had learned to regard him as inoffensive.
He had often watched, with feelings as near akin
to jealousy as his arrogant heart could entertain,
the spearing of suckers and whitefish. And now
the sight determined him to go fishing on his own
account. He remembered a point of shoals on
Big Squatook where large fish were wont to lie
basking in the sun, and where sick or disabled fish
were frequently washed ashore. Here he might
gather some spoil of the shallows, pending the time
when he could again take tribute of the fish-hawk.
Once more he launched himself from his watch-
tower under the peak of Sugar Loaf, and sailed
away over the serried green tops of the forest.
n.
Now it chanced that the old Indian, who was
the most cunning trapper in all the wilderness of
Northern New Brunswick, though he seemed so in-
tent upon his fishing, was in reality watching the
great eagle. He had anticipated, and indeed prepared
for the regal bird's expedition to those shoals of
the Big Squatook ; and now, as he marked the direc-
70 ttbe lUnoreo of tbe
tion of his flight, he clucked grimly to himself
with satisfaction, and deftly landed a large sucker
in the canoe.
That very morning, before the first pallor of dawn
had spread over Squatook, the Indian had scattered
some fish, trout and suckers, on the shore adjoining
the shoal water. The point he chose was where
a dense growth of huckleberry and withe-wood ran
out to within a few feet of the water's edge, and
where the sand of the beach was dotted thickly with
tufts of grass. The fish, partly hidden among these
tufts of grass, were all distributed over a circular
area of a diameter not greater than six or seven
feet; and just at the centre of the baited circle the
Indian had placed a stone about a foot high, such
as any reasonable eagle would like to perch upon
when making a hasty meal. He was crafty with all
the cunning of the woods, was this old trapper, and
he knew that a wise and experienced bird like the
king of Sugar Loaf was not to be snared by any
ordinary methods. But to snare him he was re-
solved, though it should take all the rest of the
summer to accomplish it; for a rich American,
visiting Edmundston on the Madawaska in the
spring, had promised him fifty dollars for a fine
specimen of the great white headed and white tailed
Ube Sloro of tbe Hit 7 1
eagle of the New Brunswick lakes, if delivered at
Edmundston alive and unhurt.
When the eagle came to the point of shoals he
noticed a slight change. That big stone was some-
thing new, and therefore to be suspected. He flew
over it without stopping, and alighted on the top
of a dead birch-tree near by. A piercing scrutiny
convinced him that the presence of the stone at a
point where he was accustomed to hop awkwardly
on the level sand, was in no way portentous, but
rather a provision of destiny for his convenience.
He sailed down and alighted upon the stone.
When he saw a dead sucker lying under a grass
tuft he considered again. Had the fish lain at the
water's edge he would have understood; but up
among the grasses, that was a singular situation
for a dead fish to get itself into. He now peered
suspiciously into the neighbouring bushes, scanned
every tuft of grass, and cast a sweeping survey up
and down the shores. Everything was as it should
be. He hopped down, captured the fish, and was
about to fly away with it to his nestlings, when
he caught sight of another, and yet another.
Further search revealed two more. Plainly the
wilderness, in one of those caprices which even his
old wisdom had not yet learned to comprehend, was
72 Ube IKinoreo of tbe Milo
caring very lavishly for the king. He hastily tore
and swallowed two of the fish, and then flew away
with the biggest of the lot to the nest behind the
top of old Sugar Loaf. That same day he came
twice again to the point of shoals, till there was
not another fish left among the grass tufts. But
on the following day, when he came again, with
hope rather than expectation in his heart, he found
that the supply had been miraculously renewed.
His labours thus were greatly lightened. He had
more time to sit upon his wind-swept watch-tower
under the peak, viewing widely his domain, and
leaving the diligent fish-hawks to toil in peace.
He fell at once into the custom of perching on the
stone at every visit, and then devouring at least
one fish before carrying a meal to the nest. His
surprise and curiosity as to the source of the supply
had died out on the second day. The wild creatures
quickly learn to accept a simple obvious good,
however extraordinary, as one of those benefi-
cences which the unseen powers bestow without
explanation.
By the time the eagle had come to this frame of
mind, the old Indian was ready for the next move
in his crafty game. He made a strong hoop of
plaited withe-wood, about seven feet in diameter.
TTbe Xorfc of tbe air 73
To this he fastened an ample bag of strong salmon-
netting, which he had brought with him from Ed-
mundston for this purpose. To the hoop he fixed
securely a stiff birch sapling for a handle, so that the
affair when completed was a monster scoop-net,
stout and durable in every part. On a moonlight
night when he knew that the eagle was safely out
of sight, on his eyrie around at the back of Sugar
Loaf, the Indian stuck this gigantic scoop into the
bow of his canoe, and paddled over to the point of
shoals. He had never heard of any one trying to
catch an eagle in a net; but, on the other hand, he
had never heard of any one wanting an eagle alive,
and being willing to emphasise his wants with fifty
dollars. The case was plainly one that called for
new ideas, and the Indian, who had freed himself
from the conservatism of his race, was keenly in-
terested in the plan which he had devised.
The handle of the great scoop-net was about eight
feet in length. Its butt the trapper drove slantingly
into the sand where the water was an inch or two
deep, bracing it securely with stones. He fixed it
at an angle so acute that the rim of the net lay
almost flat at a height of about four feet above the
stone whereon the eagle was wont to perch. Under
the uppermost edge of the hoop the trapper fixed
74 Ube Ifcinorefc of tbe
a firm prop, making the structure steady and secure.
The drooping slack of the net he then caught up
and held lightly in place on three or four willow
twigs, so that it all lay flat within the rim. This
accomplished to his satisfaction, he scattered fish
upon the ground as usual, most of them close about
the stone and within the area overshadowed by
the net, but two or three well outside. Then he
paddled noiselessly away across the moon-silvered
mirror of the lake, and disappeared into the black-
ness about the outlet.
On the following morning, the king sat upon his
watch-tower while the first light gilded the leaning
summit of Sugar Loaf. His gaze swept the vast
and shadowy basin of the landscape with its
pointed tree-tops dimly emerging above the vapour-
drift, and its blank, pallid spaces whereunder
the lakes lay veiled in dream. His golden eye
flamed fiercely under the straight and fierce white
brow; nevertheless, when he saw, far down, two
ducks winging their way across the lake, now for
a second visible, now vanishing in the mist, he
suffered them to go unstricken. The clear light
gilded the white feathers of his head and tail, but
sank and was absorbed in the cloudy gloom of his
wings. For fully half an hour he sat in regal
Xoro of tbe Hit 75
immobility. But when at last the waters of Big
Squatook were revealed, stripped and gleaming, he
dropped from his perch in a tremendous, leisurely
curve, and flew over to the point of shoals.
As he drew near, he was puzzled and annoyed to
see the queer structure that had been erected during
the night above his rock. It was inexplicable. He
at once checked his flight and began whirling in
great circles, higher and higher, over the spot, try-
ing in vain to make out what it was. He could see
that the dead fish were there as usual. And at
length he satisfied himself that no hidden peril
lurked in the near-by huckleberry thicket. Then he
descended to the nearest tree-top and spent a good
half-hour in moveless watching of the net. He
little guessed that a dusky figure, equally moveless
and far more patient, was watching him in turn
from a thicket across the lake.
At the end of this long scrutiny, the eagle decided
that a closer investigation was desirable. He flew
down and alighted on the level sand well away from
the net. There he found a fish which he devoured.
Then he found another; and this he carried away
to the eyrie. He had not solved the mystery of the
strange structure overhanging the rock, but he had
proved that it was not actively inimical. It had
76 Ube fcinfcre& ot tbe TKHU&
not interfered with his morning meal, or attempted
to hinder him from carrying off his customary
spoils. When he returned an hour later to the point
of shoals the net looked less strange to him. He
even perched on the sloping handle, balancing him-
self with outspread wings till the swaying ceased.
The thing was manifestly harmless. He hopped
down, looked with keen interested eyes at the fish
beside the rock, hopped in and clutched one out
with beak and claw, hopped back again in a great
hurry, and flew away with the prize to his watch-
tower on Sugar Loaf. This caution he repeated at
every visit throughout that day. But when he came
again on the morrow, he had grown once more
utterly confident. He went under the net without
haste or apprehension, and perched unconcernedly
on the stone in the midst of his banquet. And the
stony face of the old Indian, in his thicket across
the lake, flashed for one instant with a furtive grin.
He grunted, melted back into the woods, and slipped
away to resume his fishing at the outlet.
The next morning, about an hour before dawn,
a ghostly birch canoe slipped up to the point of
shoals, and came to land about a hundred yards
from the net. The Indian stepped out, lifted it
from the water, and hid it in the bushes. Then he
Xoro of tbe Hit 77
proceeded to make some important changes in the
arrangement of the net.
To the topmost rim of the hoop he tied a strong
cord, brought the free end to the ground, led it
under a willow root, and carried it some ten paces
back into the thicket. Next he removed the sup-
porting prop. Going back into the thicket, he
pulled the cord. It ran freely under the willow root,
and the net swayed down till it covered the rock, to
rebound to its former position the moment he re-
leased the cord. Then he restored the prop to its
place; but this time, instead of planting its butt
firmly in the sand, he balanced it on a small flat
stone, so that the least pull would instantaneously
dislodge it. To the base of the prop he fixed another
cord; and this also he ran under the willow root
and carried back into the thicket. To the free end
of this second cord he tied a scrap of red flannel,
that there might be no mistake at a critical moment.
The butt of the handle he loosened, so that if the
prop were removed the net would almost fall of its
own weight; and on the upper side of the butt,
to give steadiness and speed of action, he leaned two
heavy stones. Finally, he baited his trap with the
usual dead fish, bunching them now under the centre
of the net. Then, satisfying himself that all was in
78 ftbe ltfn&re& of tbe TKHU&
working order, he wormed his way into the heart
of the thicket. A few leafy branches, cunningly dis-
posed around and above his hiding-place, made his
concealment perfect, while his keen black beads of
eyes commanded a clear view of the stone beneath
the net. The ends of the two cords were between
his lean fingers. No waiting fox or hiding grouse
could have lain more immovable, could have held
his muscles in more patient perfect stillness, than
did the wary old trapper through the chill hour of
growing dawn.
At last there came a sound that thrilled even
such stoic nerves as his. Mighty wings hissed in
the air above his head. The next moment he saw
the eagle alight upon the level sand beside the net.
This time there was no hesitation. The great bird,
for all his wisdom, had been lured into accepting
the structure as a part of the established order of
things. He hopped with undignified alacrity right
under the net, clutched a large whitefish, and
perched himself on the stone to enjoy his meal.
At that instant he felt, rather than saw, the
shadow of a movement in the thicket. Or rather,
perhaps, some inward, unaccredited guardian sig-
nalled to him of danger. His muscles gathered
themselves for that instantaneous spring wherewith
" HELPLESSLY INTERTANGLhD IN THE MESHES."
%oro of tbe Hit 81
he was wont to hurl himself into the air. But even
that electric speed of his was too slow for this
demand. Ere he could spring, the great net came
down about him with a vicious swish; and in a
moment beating wings, tearing beak, and clutching
talons were helplessly intertangled in the meshes.
Before he could rip himself free, a blanket was
thrown over him. He was ignominiously rolled
into a bundle, picked up, and carried off under the
old Indian's arm.
in.
When the king was gone, it seemed as if a hush
had fallen over the country of the Squatooks. When
the old pine beneath the toppling peak of Sugar Loaf
had stood vacant all the long golden hours of the
morning, two crows flew up from the fir-woods to
investigate. They hopped up and down on the
sacred seat, cawing impertinently and excitedly.
Then in a sudden flurry of apprehension they darted
away. News of the great eagle's mysterious ab-
sence spread quickly among the wood folk, not
by direct communication, indeed, except in the case
of the crows, but subtly and silently, as if by some
telepathic code intelligible alike to mink and wood-
mouse, kingfisher and lucifee.
82 Ube *Rin&re& ot tbc
When the noon had gone by, and the shadow of
Sugar Loaf began to creep over the edge of the
nest, the old mother eagle grew uneasy at the pro-
longed absence of her mate. Never before since
the nestlings broke the shell had he been so long
away. Never before had she been compelled to real-
ise how insatiable were the appetites of her young.
She flew around to the pine-tree on the other side
of the peak, and finding it vacant, something told
her it had been long unoccupied. Then she flew
hither and thither over all the lakes, a fierce loneli-
ness growing in her heart. From the long grasses
around the mouth of the thoroughfare between third
and fourth lakes a heron arose, flapping wide bluish
wings, and she dropped upon it savagely. However
her wild heart ached, the nestlings must be fed.
With the long limp neck and slender legs of the
heron trailing from her talons, she flew away to the
eyrie; and she came no more to the Squatooks.
The knowledge of all the woodfolk around the
lakes had been flashed in upon her, and she knew
some mysterious doom had fallen upon her mate.
Thereafter, though the country of the Squatooks
was closer at hand and equally well stocked with
game, and though the responsibilities of her hunting
had been doubled, she kept strictly to her old
Ube Xorfc of tbe Hit 85
hunting-ground of the Tuladis. Everything on the
north side of old Sugar Loaf had grown hateful to
her ; and unmolested within half a mile of the eyrie,
the diligent fish-hawks plied their craft, screaming
triumphantly over every capture. The male, indeed,
growing audacious after the king had been a whole
week absent, presumed so far as to adopt the old
pine-tree under the peak for his perch, to the loud
and disconcerting derision of the crows. They
flocked blackly about with vituperative malice, driv-
ing him to forsake his seat of usurpation and soar
indignantly to heights where they could not follow.
But at last the game palled upon their whimsical
fancies, and they left him in peace to his aping of
the king.
Meanwhile, in the village of Edmundston, in the
yard of a house that stood ever enfolded in the
sleepless roar of the Falls of Madawaska, the king
was eating out his sorrowful and tameless heart.
Around one steely-scaled leg, just above the spread
of the mighty claws, he wore the ragged ignominy
of a bandage of soiled red flannel. This was to pre-
vent the chafing of the clumsy and rusty dog-chain
which secured him to his perch in an open shed that
looked out upon the river. Across the river, across
the cultivated valley with its roofs, and farther
86 trbe 1Rfn&re& of tbe Milt)
across the forest hills than any human eye could see,
his eye could see a dim summit, as it were a faint
blue cloud on the horizon, his own lost realm of
Sugar Loaf. Hour after hour he would sit upon his
rude perch, unstirring, unwinking, and gaze upon
this faint blue cloud of his desire.
From his jailers he accepted scornfully his daily
rations of fish, ignoring the food while any one
was by, but tearing it and gorging it savagely when
left alone. As week after week dragged on, his
hatred of his captors gathered force, but he showed
no sign. Fear he was hardly conscious of; or,
at least, he had never felt that panic fear which
unnerves even kings, except during the one appal-
ling moment when he felt the falling net encumber
his wings, and the trapper's smothering blanket shut
out the sun from his eyes. Now, when any one of
his jailers approached and sought to win his con-
fidence, he would shrink within himself and harden
his feathers with wild inward aversion, but his
eye of piercing gold would neither dim nor waver,
and a clear perception of the limits of his chain
would prevent any futile and ignoble struggle to
escape. Had he shown more fear, more wildness,
his jailers would have more hope of subduing him
in some measure ; but as it was, being back country
tTbe %orfc of tbe Hit 87
men with some knowledge of the wilderness folk,
they presently gave him up as tameless and left off
troubling him with their attentions. They took
good care of him, however, for they were to be
well paid for their trouble when the rich American
came for his prize.
At last he came; and when he saw the king he
was glad. Trophies he had at home in abundance,
the skins of lions which he had shot on the
Zambesi, of tigers from Himalayan foot-hills, of
grizzlies from Alaskan canons, and noble heads
of moose and caribou from these very highlands of
Squatook, whereon the king had been wont to look
from his dizzy gyres of flight above old Sugar Loaf.
But the great white-headed eagle, who year after
year had baffled his woodcraft and eluded his rifle,
he had come to love so that he coveted him alive.
Now, having been apprised of the capture of so
fine and well-known a bird as the king of old
Sugar Loaf, he had brought with him an anklet
of thick, soft leather for the illustrious captive's
leg, and a chain of wrought steel links, slender,
delicate, and strong. On the morning after his
arrival the new chain was to be fitted.
The great eagle was sitting erect upon his perch,
gazing at the faint blue cloud which he alone could
88 Ube liin&re& ot tbc Milt)
see, when two men came to the shed beside the
river. One he knew. It was his chief jailer, the
man who usually brought fish. The other was a
stranger, who carried in his hand a long, glittering
thing that jangled and stirred a vague apprehension
in his heart. The jailer approached, and with a
quick movement wrapped him in a coat, till beak
and wings and talons alike were helpless. There
was one instinctive, convulsive spasm within the
wrapping, and the bundle was still, the great bird
being too proud as well as too wise to waste force
in a vain struggle.
" Seems pretty tame already," remarked the
stranger, in a tone of satisfaction.
" Tame! " exclaimed the countryman. " Them's
the kind as don't tame. I've give up trying to tame
him. Ef you keep him, an' feed him, an' coax him
for ten year, he'll be as wild as the day Gabe snared
him up on Big Squatook."
" We'll see," said the stranger, who had confi-
dence in his knowledge of the wild folk.
Seating himself on a broken-backed chair just
outside the shadow of the shed, where the light
was good, the countryman held the motionless
bundle firmly across his knees, and proceeded cau-
tiously to free the fettered leg. He held it in an
ttbe Xorfc of tbe Hit 89
inflexible grip, respecting those knife-edged claws.
Having removed the rusty dog-chain and the igno-
minious red flannel bandage, he fitted dexterously
the soft leather anklet, with its three tiny silver
buckles, and its daintily engraved plate, bearing the
king's name with the place and date of his capture.
Then he reached out his hand for the new steel
chain.
The eagle, meanwhile, had been slowly and im-
perceptibly working his head free ; and now, behind
the countryman's arm, he looked out from the im-
prisoning folds of the coat. Fierce, wild, but unaf-
frighted, his eye caught the glitter of the chain as
the stranger held it out. That glitter moved him
strangely. On a sudden impulse he opened his
mighty beak, and tore savagely at the countryman's
leg.
With a yell of pain and surprise the man at-
tempted to jump away from this assault. But as the
assailant was on his lap this was obviously impos-
sible. The muscles of his leg stiffened out instinc-
tively, and the broken-backed chair gave way
under the strain. Arms and legs flew wildly in
the air as he sprawled backward, and the coat fell
apart, and the eagle found himself free. The
stranger sprang forward to clutch his treasured
9 Ube Idnorefc of tbe TlflUio
captive, but received a blinding buffet from the
great wings undestined to captivity. The next
moment the king bounded upward. The air whis-
tled under his tremendous wing-strokes. Up, up
he mounted, leaving the men to gape after him,
flushed and foolish. Then he headed his flight for
that faint blue cloud beyond the hills.
That afternoon there was a difference in the
country of the Squatooks. The nestlings in the
eyrie bigger and blacker and more clamorous
they were now than when he went away found
more abundant satisfaction to their growing appe-
tites. Their wide-winged mother, hunting away on
Tuladi, hunted with more joyous heart. The fish-
hawks on the Squatook waters came no more near
the blasted pine; but they fished more diligently,
and their hearts were big with indignation over the
spoils which they had been forced to deliver up.
The crows far down in the fir-tops were garrulous
about the king's return, and the news spread swiftly
among the mallards, the muskrats, the hares, and
the careful beavers. And the solitude about the
toppling peak of old Sugar Loaf seemed to resume
some lost sublimity, as the king resumed his throne
among the winds.
TOilfc fl&otberboofc
deep snow in the moose-yard was
trodden down to the moss, and darkly
soiled with many days of occupancy.
The young spruce and birch trees which lined
the trodden paths were cropped of all but their
toughest and coarsest branches; and the wall
of loftier growth which fenced the yard was
stripped of its tenderer twigs to the utmost height
of the tall bull's neck. The available provender was
all but gone, and the herd was in that restlessness
which precedes a move to new pastures.
The herd of moose was a small one three
gaunt, rusty-brown, slouching cows, two ungainly
calves of a lighter hue, and one huge, high-shoul-
dered bull, whose sweep of palmated antlers bristled
like a forest. Compared with the towering bulk
of his forequarters, the massive depth of his rough-
maned neck, the weight of the formidable antlers,
the length and thickness of his clumsy, hooked
muzzle with its prehensile upper lip, his lean and
93
94 Ube IRiufcreo of tbe Milo
frayed hindquarters looked grotesquely diminutive.
Surprised by three days of blinding snowfall, the
great bull-moose had been forced to establish the
yard for his herd in an unfavourable neighbour-
hood; and now he found himself confronted by
the necessity of a long march through snow of
such softness and depth as would make swift move-
ment impossible and fetter him in the face of his
enemies. In deep snow the moose can neither flee
nor fight, at both of which he is adept under fair
conditions ; and deep snow, as he knew, is the oppor-
tunity of the wolf and the hunter. But in this
case the herd had no choice. It was simply take
the risk or starve.
That same night, when the moon was rising
round and white behind the fir-tops, the tall bull
breasted and trod down the snowy barriers, and
led his herd off northward between the hemlock
trunks and the jutting granite boulders. He moved
slowly, his immense muzzle stretched straight out
before him, the bony array of his antlers laid back
level to avoid the hindrance of clinging boughs.
Here and there a hollow under the level surface
would set him plunging and wallowing for a
moment, but in the main his giant strength enabled
him to forge his way ahead with a steady majesty
"LF.D HIS HERD OFF NORTHWARD."
flDotberboofc 97
of might. Behind him, in dutiful line, came the
three cows; and behind these, again, the calves fol-
lowed at ease in a clear trail, their muzzles not
outstretched like that of the leader, but drooping
almost to the snow, their high shoulders working
awkwardly at every stride. In utter silence, like
dark, monstrous spectres, the line of strange shapes
moved on; and down the bewildering, ever-rear-
ranging forest corridors the ominous fingers of long
moonlight felt curiously after them. When they
had journeyed for some hours the herd came out
upon a high and somewhat bare plateau, dotted
sparsely with clumps of aspen, stunted yellow birch,
and spruce. From this table-land the streaming
northwest winds had swept the snow almost clean,
carrying it off to fill the neighbouring valleys.
The big bull, who knew where he was going and
had no will to linger on the way, halted only for
a few minutes' browsing, and then started forward
on a long, swinging trot. At every stride his loose-
hung, wide-cleft, spreading hoofs came sharply
together with a flat, clacking noise. The rest of
the line swept dutifully into place, and the herd
was off.
But not all the herd. One of the calves, tempted
a little aside by a thicket of special juiciness and
98 ZTbe fttufcreO of tbe
savour, took alarm, and thought he was going to
be left behind. He sprang forward, a powerful but
clumsy stride, careless of his footing. A treacher-
ous screen of snow-crusted scrub gave way, and he
slid sprawling to the bottom of a little narrow gully
or crevice, a natural pitfall. His mother, looking
solicitously backward, saw him disappear. With
a heave of her shoulders, a sweep of her long,
hornless head, an anxious flick of her little naked
tail, she swung out of the line and trotted swiftly
to the rescue.
There was nothing she could do. The crevice
was some ten or twelve feet long and five or six
in width, with sides almost perpendicular. The calf
could just reach its bushy edges with his upstretched
muzzle, but he could get no foothold by which to
clamber out. On every side he essayed it, falling
back with a hoarse bleat from each frightened effort ;
while the mother, with head down and piteous eyes
staring upon him, ran round and round the rim of
the trap. At last, when he stopped and stood with
palpitating sides and wide nostrils of terror, she,
too, halted. Dropping awkwardly upon her knees
in the snowy bushes, with loud, blowing breaths, she
reached down her head to nose and comfort him
with her sensitive muzzle. The calf leaned up as
"STOOD FOR A MOMENT TO SNIFF THE AIR."
/IDotberboofc *i
close as possible to her caresses. Under their
tenderness the tremblings of his gaunt, pathetic
knees presently ceased. And in this position the
two remained almost motionless for an hour, under
the white, unfriendly moon. The herd had gone
on without them.
ii.
In the wolf's cave in the great blue and white
wall of plaster-rock, miles back beside the rushing
of the river, there was famine. The she-wolf,
heavy and near her time, lay agonising in the
darkest corner of the cave, licking in grim silence
the raw stump of her right foreleg. Caught in .a
steel trap, she had gnawed off her own paw as the
price of freedom. She could not hunt; and the
hunting was bad that winter in the forests by the
blue and white wall. The wapiti deer had migrated
to safer ranges, and her gray mate, hunting alone,
was hard put to it to keep starvation from the cave.
The gray wolf trotted briskly down the broken
face of the plaster-rock, in the full glare of the
moon, and stood for a moment to sniff the air that
came blowing lightly but keenly over the stiff tops
of the forest. The wind was clean. It gave him
no tidings of a quarry. Descending hurriedly the
102 Ube ftttft^ of tbe
last fifty yards of the slope, he plunged into the
darkness of the fir woods. Soft as was the snow
in those quiet recesses, it was yet sufficiently packed
to support him as he trotted, noiseless and alert, on
the broad-spreading pads of his paws. Furtive
and fierce, he slipped through the shadow like a
ghost. Across the open glades he fleeted more
swiftly, a bright and sinister shape, his head swing-
ing a little from side to side, every sense upon the
watch. His direction was pretty steadily to the
west of north.
He had travelled long, till the direction of
the moon-shadows had taken a different angle to his
path, when suddenly there came a scent upon the
wind. He stopped, one foot up, arrested in his
stride. The gray, cloudy brush of his tail stiffened
out. His nostrils, held high to catch every waft
of the new scent, dilated; and the edges of his
upper lip came down over the white fangs, from
which they had been snarlingly withdrawn. His
pause was but for a breath or two. Yes, there was
no mistaking it. The scent was moose very far
off, but moose, without question. He darted for-
ward at a gallop, but with his muzzle still held
high, following that scent up the wind.
Presently he struck the trail of the herd. An
Wiilb flDotberfeoofc 103
instant's scrutiny told his trained sense that there
were calves and young cows, one or another of
which he might hope to stampede by his cunning.
The same instant's scrutiny revealed to him that
the herd had passed nearly an hour ahead of him.
Up went the gray cloud of his tail and down went
his nose; and then he straightened himself to his
top speed, compared to which the pace wherewith
he had followed the scent up the wind was a mere
casual sauntering.
When he emerged upon the open plateau and
reached the spot where the herd had scattered to
browse, he slackened his pace and went warily,
peering from side to side. The cow-moose, lying
down in the bushes to fondle her imprisoned young,
was hidden from his sight for the moment ; and so
it chanced that before he discovered her he came
between her and the wind. That scent it was
the taint of death to her. It went through her
frame like an electric shock. With a snort of fear
and fury she heaved to her feet and stood, wide-
eyed and with lowered brow, facing the menace.
The wolf heard that snorting challenge, and saw
the awkward bulk of her shoulders as she rose
above the scrub. His jaws wrinkled back tightly,
baring the full length of his keen white fangs, and
io 4 Ube Ikinfcreo of tbe TPGUifc
a greenish phosphorescent film seemed to pass sud-
denly across his narrowed eyeballs. But he did
not spring at once to the attack. He was surprised.
Moreover, he inferred the calf, from the presence
of the cow apart from the rest of the herd. And
a full-grown cow-moose, with the mother fury in
her heart, he knew to be a dangerous adversary.
Though she was hornless, he knew the force of her
battering front, the swift, sharp stroke of her hoof,
the dauntless intrepidity of her courage. Further,
though his own courage and the avid urge of his
hunger might have led him under other circum-
stances to attack forthwith, to-night he knew that
he must take no chances. The cave in the blue
and white rocks was depending on his success. His
mate, wounded and heavy with young if he let
himself get disabled in this hunting she must perish
miserably. With prudent tactics, therefore, he
circled at a safe distance around the hidden pit;
and around its rim circled the wary mother, pre-
senting to him ceaselessly the defiance of her huge
and sullen front. By this means he easily concluded
that the calf was a prisoner in the pit. This being
the case, he knew that with patience and his experi-
enced craft the game was safely his. He drew off
some half-dozen paces, and sat upon his haunches
LIVINGSTON BULL.
"AROUND ITS RIM CIRCLED THE WARV MOTHER.'
TKaut> flDotberboofc 107
contemplatively to weigh the situation. Everything
had turned out most fortunately for his hunting,
and food would no longer be scarce in the cave of
the painted rocks.
in.
That same night, in a cabin of unutterable loneli-
ness some miles to the west of the trail from the
moose-yard, a sallow-faced, lean backwoodsman was
awakened by the moonlight streaming into his face
through the small square window. He glanced at
the embers on trie open hearth, and knew that for
the white maple logs to have so burned down he
must have been sleeping a good six hours. And
he had turned in soon after the early winter sunset.
Rising on his elbow, he threw down the gaudy
patchwork quilt of red, yellow, blue, and mottled
squares, which draped the bunk in its corner against
the rough log walls. He looked long at the thin
face of his wife, whose pale brown hair lay over
the bare arm crooked beneath her cheek. Her lips
looked pathetically white in the decolourising rays
which streamed through the window. His mouth,
stubbled with a week's growth of dark beard,
twitched curiously as he looked. Then he got up,
very noiselessly. Stepping across the bare, hard
room, whose austerity the moon made more austere,
io8 abe Ignores of tbe Wflo
he gazed into a trundle-bed where a yellow-haired,
round-faced boy slept, with the chubby sprawling
legs and arms of perfect security. The lad's face
looked pale to his troubled eyes.
" It's fresh meat they want, the both of 'em," he
muttered to himself. " They can't live and thrive
on pork an' molasses, nohow ! "
His big fingers, clumsily gentle, played for a
moment with the child's yellow curls. Then he
pulled a thick, gray homespun hunting-shirt over
his head, hitched his heavy trousers up under his
belt, clothed his feet in three pairs of home-knit
socks and heavy cowhide moccasins, took down his
rifle, cartridge-pouch, and snowshoes from their
nails on the moss-chinked wall, cast one tender look
on the sleepers' faces, and slipped out of the cabin
door as silently as a shadow.
" I'll have fresh meat for them before next
sundown," he vowed to himself.
Outside, amid the chips of his chopping, with
a rough well-sweep on one hand and a rougher barn
on the other, he knelt to put on his snowshoes. The
cabin stood, a desolate, silver-gray dot in the waste
of snow, naked to the steely skies of winter. With
the curious improvidence of the backwoodsman, he
had cut down every tree in the neighbourhood of
flDotberboofc 109
the cabin, and the thick woods which might so
well have sheltered him stood acres distant on
every side. When he had settled the thongs of his
snowshoes over his moccasins quite to his satis-
faction, he straightened himself with a deep breath,
pulled his cap well down over his ears, slung his
rifle over his shoulder, and started out with the
white moon in his face.
In the ancient forest, among the silent wilderness
folk, things happen with the slow inexorableness
of time. For days, for weeks, nothing may befall.
Hour may tread noiselessly on hour, apparently
working no change; yet all the time the forces are
assembling, and at last doom strikes. The violence
is swift, and soon done. And then the great, still
world looks inscrutable, unhurried, changeless as
before.
So, after long tranquillity, .the forces of fate were
assembling about that high plateau in the wilder-
ness. The backwoodsman could no longer endure
to see the woman and boy pining for the tonic,
vitalising juices of fresh meat. He was not a
professional hunter. Absorbed in the clearing and
securing of a farm in the free forest, he cared not
to kill for the killing's sake. For his own part, he
was well content with his salt pork, beans and
no tlbe Ifciufcrefc of tbe Milt)
molasses, and corn-meal mush; but when occasion
called, he could handle a rifle as backwoodsmen
should. On this night, he was all hunter, and his
quiet, wide-open eye, alert for every woodland sign,
had a fire in it that would have looked strange to
the wife and child.
His long strides carried him swiftly through
the glimmering glades. Journeying to the north
of east, as the gray wolf had to the north of west,
he too, before long, struck the trail of the moose,
but at a point far beyond that at which the wolf
had come upon it. So trampled and confused a
trail it was, however, that for a time he took no
note of the light wolf track among the heavy foot-
prints of the moose. Suddenly it caught his eye
one print on a smooth spread of snow, empha-
sised in a pour of unobstructed radiance. He
stopped, scrutinised the trail minutely to assure
himself he had but a single wolf to deal with, then
resumed his march with new zest and springier
pace. Hunting was not without its relish for him
when it admitted some savour of the combat.
The cabin stood in the valley lands just back of
the high plateau, and so it chanced that the back-
woodsman had not far to travel that night. Where
the trail broke into the open, he stopped, and rec-
/iDotberboot) m
onnoitred cautiously through a screen of hemlock
boughs. He saw the big gray wolf sitting straight
up on his haunches, his tongue hanging out, con-
templating securely his intended prey. He saw the
dark shape of the cow-moose, obstinately confront-
ing her foe, her hindquarters backed close up to
the edge of the gully. He caught the fierce and
anxious gleam of her eyes, as she rolled them back-
ward for an instant's reassuring glance at her
young one. And, though he could not see the calf
in its prisoning pit, he understood the whole situ-
ation.
Well, there was a bounty on wolf-snouts, and this
fellow's pelt was worth considering. As for the
moose, he knew that not a broadside of cannon
would scare her away from that hole in the rocks
so long as the calf was in it. He took careful aim
from his covert. At the report the wolf shot into
the air, straightened out, and fell upon the snow,
kicking dumbly, a bullet through his neck. As the
light faded from his fierce eyes, with it faded out
a vision of the cave in the painted rocks. In half
a minute he lay still; and the cow-moose, startled
by his convulsive leaps more than by the rifle-shot,
blew and snorted, eyeing him with new suspicion.
Her spacious flank was toward the hunter. He,
H2 tlbe "fcinoreo of tbe TKflUo
with cool but hasty fingers, slipped a fresh cartridge
into the breech, and aimed with care at a spot low
down behind the fore-shoulder.
Again rang out the thin, vicious report, slapping
the great silences in the face. The woodsman's
aim was true. With a cough the moose fell for-
ward on her knees. Then, with a mighty, shud-
dering effort, she got up, turned about, and fell
again with her head over the edge of the crevice.
Her awkward muzzle touched and twitched against
the neck of the frightened calf, and with a heavy
sigh she lay still.
The settler stepped out from his hiding-place,
and examined with deep satisfaction the results of
his night's hunting. Already he saw the colour
coming back into the pale cheeks of the woman and
the child. The wolf's pelt and snout, too, he thought
to himself, would get them both some little things
they'd like, from the cross-roads store, next time
he went in for corn-meal. Then, there was the
calf no meat like moose-veal, after all. He
drew his knife from its sheath. But, no; he hated
butchering. He slipped the knife back, reloaded his
rifle, stepped to the side of the pit, and stood
looking down at the baby captive, where it leaned
nosing in piteous bewilderment at the head of its
dead mother.
TIGUtfc /iDotberboofc "3
Again the woodsman changed his mind. He bit
off a chew of black tobacco, and for some moments
stood deliberating, stubbly chin in hand. " I'll save
him for the boy to play with and bring up," he at
last decided.
Ibomesicfeness of Ikebcmfca
HE April night, softly chill and full of
the sense of thaw, was closing down
over the wide salt marshes. Near at
hand the waters of the Tantramar, resting at full
tide, glimmered through the dusk and lapped faintly
among the winter-ruined remnants of the sedge.
Far off infinitely far it seemed in that illusive
atmosphere, which was clear, yet full of the ghosts
of rain the last of daylight lay in a thin streak,
pale and sharp, along a vast arc of the horizon.
Overhead it was quite dark; for there was no
moon, and the tenuous spring clouds were suffi-
cient to shut out the stars. They clung in mid-
heaven, but kept to their shadowy ranks without
descending to obscure the lower air. Space and
mystery, mystery and space, lay abroad upon the
vague levels of marsh and tide.
Presently, from far along the dark heights of
the sky, came voices, hollow, musical, confused.
Swiftly they journeyed nearer; they grew louder.
117
us Ube Itfnoreo of tbe
The sound not vibrant, yet strangely far-carry-
ing was a clamorous monotony of honk-a-honk,
honk-a-honk, honka, honka, honk, honk. It hinted
of wide distance voyaged over on tireless wings,
of a tropic winter passed in feeding amid remote,
high-watered meadows of Mexico and Texas, of
long flights yet to go, toward the rocky tarns of
Labrador and the reed beds of Ungava. As the
sound passed straight overhead the listener on the
marsh below imagined, though he could not see,
the strongly beating wings, the outstretched necks
and heads, the round, unswerving eyes of the
wild goose flock in its V-shaped array, winnowing
steadily northward through the night. But this
particular flock was not set, as it chanced, upon
an all-night journey. The wise old gander winging
at the head of the V knew of good feeding-grounds
near by, which he was ready to revisit. He led
the flock straight on, above the many windings of
the Tantramar, till its full-flooded sheen far below
him narrowed and narrowed to a mere brook.
Here, in the neighbourhood of the uplands, were a
number of shallow, weedy, fresh-water lakes, with
shores so choked with thickets and fenced apart
with bogs as to afford a security which his years
and broad experience had taught him to value.
Ube Homesickness of Uebonfta "9
Into one of these lakes, a pale blur amid the thick
shadows of the shores, the flock dropped with heavy
splashings. A scream or two of full-throated con-
tent, a few flappings of wings and rufflings of plu-
mage in the cool, and the voyagers settled into quiet.
All night there was silence around the flock, save
for the whispering seepage of the snow patches
that still lingered among the thickets. With the
first creeping pallor of dawn the geese began to
feed, plunging their long black necks deep into the
water and feeling with the sensitive inner edges
of their bills for the swelling root-buds of weed
and sedge. When the sun was about the edge of
the horizon, and the first rays came sparkling, of
a chilly pink most luminous and pure, through the
lean traceries of the brushwood, the leader raised
his head high and screamed a signal. With answer-
ing cries and a tempestuous splashing the flock
flapped for a few yards along the surface of the
water. Then they rose clear, formed quickly into
rank, and in their spacious V went honking north-
ward over the half-lighted, mysterious landscape.
But, as it chanced, not all of the flock set out
with that morning departure. There was one pair,
last year's birds, upon whom had fallen a weari-
ness of travel. Perhaps in the coils of their brains
120 irbe liin&reo of tbe TKHilfc
lurked some inherited memory of these safe resting-
places and secluded feeding-grounds of the Midgic
lakes. However that may have been, they chose
to stay where they were, feeling in their blood no
call from the cold north solitudes. Dipping and
bowing, black neck by neck, they gave no heed
to the leader's signal, nor to the noisy going of
the flock. Pushing briskly with the black webs of
their feet against the discoloured water, they swam
to the shore and cast about for a place to build
their nest.
There was no urgent hurry, so they chose not
on that day nor the next. When they chose, it
was a little bushy islet off a point of land, well
tangled with alder and osier and a light flotsam of
driftwood. The nest, in the heart of the tangle,
was an apparently haphazard collection of sticks and
twigs, well raised above the damp, well lined with
moss and feathers. Here, in course of days, there
accumulated a shining cluster of six large white
eggs. But by this time the spring freshet had gone
down. The islet was an islet no longer, but a
mere adjunct of the point, which any inquisitive
foot might reach dry shod. Now just at this time
it happened that a young farmer, who had a curious
taste for all the wild kindred of wood, and flood,
Hiomesicfeness of ftebonfta iai
and air, came up from the Lower Tantramar with
a wagon-load of grist for the Midgic mill. While
his buckwheat and barley were a-grinding, he
thought of a current opinion to the effect that the
wild geese were given to nesting in the Midgic lakes.
" If so," said he to himself, " this is the time they
would be about it." Full of interest, a half-hour's
tramp through difficult woods brought him to the
nearest of the waters. An instinct, an intuition
born of his sympathy with the furtive folk, led him
to the point, and out along the point to that once
islet, with its secret in the heart of the tangle. Vain
were the furious hissings, the opposing wings, the
wide black bills that threatened and oppugned him.
With the eager delight of a boy he pounced upon
those six great eggs, and carried them all away.
" They will soon turn out another clutch," said he
to himself, as he left the bereaved pair, and tramped
elatedly back to the mill. As for the bereaved pair,
being of a philosophic spirit, they set themselves to
fulfil as soon as possible his prophecy.
On the farm by the Lower Tantramar, in a hogs-
head half filled with straw and laid on its side in
a dark corner of the tool-shed, those six eggs were
diligently brooded for four weeks and two days
by a comfortable gray and white goose of the com-
122 ube ikinorefc of tbe TKIUlo
mon stock. When they hatched, the good gray and
white mother may have been surprised to find her
goslings of an olive green hue, instead of the bright
golden yellow which her past experience and that
of her fellows had taught her to expect. She may
have marvelled, too, at their unwonted slenderness
and activity. These trivial details, however, in no
way dampened the zeal with which she led them
to the goose pond, or the fidelity with which she
pastured and protected them. But rats, skunks,
sundry obscure ailments, and the heavy wheels of
the farm wagon, are among the perils which, the
summer through, lie in wait for all the children of
the feathered kin upon the farm; and so it came
about that of the six young ones so successfully
hatched from the wild goose eggs, only two lived
till the coming of autumn brought them full plumage
and the power of flight. Before the time of the
southward migration came near, the young farmer
took these two and clipped from each the strong
primaries of their right wings. " They seem con-
tented enough, and tame as any," he said to himself,
" but you never can tell what'll happen when the
instinct strikes 'em."
Both the young wild geese were fine males.
Their heads and long, slim necks were black, as
TCbe Utomesfcfeness of IKebonfca 123
were also their tails, great wing feathers, bills, and
feet. Under the tail their feathers were of snowiest
white, and all the other portions of their bodies a
rich grayish brown. Each bore on the side of its
face a sharply defined triangular patch of white,
mottled with faint brown markings that would dis-
appear after his first moult. In one the white cheek
patches met under the throat. This was a large,
strongly built bird, of a placid and domestic temper.
He was satisfied with the undistinguished gray
companions of the flock. He was content, like them,
to gutter noisily with his discriminating bill along
the shallow edges of the pond, to float and dive and
flap in the deeper centre, to pasture at random over
the wet meadow, biting off the short grasses with
quick, sharp, yet gracefully curving dabs. Goose
pond and wet meadow and cattle-trodden barnyard
bounded his aspirations. When his adult voice
came to him, all he would say was honk, honk, con-
templatively, and sometimes honk-a-honk when he
flapped his wings in the exhilarating coolness of
the sunrise. The other captive was of a more
restless temperament, slenderer in build, more eager
and alert of eye, less companionable of mood. He
was, somehow, never seen in the centre of the flock
he never seemed a part of it. He fed, swam,
124 TCbe Tfcinfcreo of tbe TKHU&
rested, preened himself, always a little apart. Often,
when the others were happily occupied with their
familiar needs and satisfactions, he would stand
motionless, his compact, glossy head high in air,
looking to the north as if in expectation, listening
as if he awaited longed-for tidings. The triangular
white patch on each side of his head was very
narrow, and gave him an expression of wildness;
yet in reality he was no more wild, or rather no
more shy, than any others of the flock. None,
indeed, had so confident a fearlessness as he. He
would take oats out of the farmer's hand, which
none of the rest quite dared to do.
Until late in the autumn, the lonely, uncomraded
bird was always silent. But when the migrating
flocks began to pass overhead, on the long southward
trail, and their hollow clamour was heard over the
farmstead night and morning, he grew more rest-
less. He would take a short run with outspread
wings, and then, feeling their crippled inefficiency,
would stretch himself to his full height and call, a
sonorous, far-reaching cry ke-honk-a, ke-honk-a.
From this call, so often repeated throughout Octo-
ber and November, the farmer named him Kehonka.
The farmer's wife favoured the more domesticated
and manageable brother, who could be trusted
" HE WOULD STAND MOTIONLESS, HIS COMPACT, GLOSSY HEAD
HIGH IN AIR."
IKomestcfeness ot Ifcebonfca 127
never to stray. But the farmer, who mused deeply
over his furrows, and half wistfully loved the wild
kindred, loved Kehonka, and used to say he would
not lose the bird for the price of a steer. " That
there bird," he would say, " has got dreams away
down in his heart. Like as not, he remembers
things his father and mother have seen, up amongst
the ice cakes and the northern lights, or down
amongst the bayous and the big southern lilies."
But all his sympathy failed to make him repent of
having clipped Kehonka's wing.
During the long winter, when the winds swept
fiercely the open marshes of the Tantramar, and the
snow piled in high drifts around the barns and wood
piles, and the sheds were darkened, and in the sun
at noonday the strawy dungheaps steamed, the rest
of the geese remained listlessly content. But not so
Kehonka. Somewhere back of his brain he cher-
ished pre-natal memories of warm pools in the
South, where leafy screens grew rank, and the sweet-
rooted water-plants pulled easily from the deep
black mud, and his true kindred were screaming
to each other at the oncoming of the tropic dark.
While the flock was out in the barnyard, pulling
lazily at the trampled litter, and snatching scraps of
the cattle's chopped turnips, Kehonka would stand
128 ttbe TRmfcrefc of tbe
aloof by the water-trough, his head erect, listening,
longing. As the winter sun sank early over the
fir woods back of the farm, his wings would open,
and his desirous cry would go echoing three or
four times across the still countryside ke-honk-a
ke-honk-a ke-honk-a ! Whereat the farmer's
wife, turning her buckwheat pancakes over the hot
kitchen stove, would mutter impatiently; but the
farmer, slipping to the door of the cow-stable with
the bucket of feed in his hand, would look with
deep eyes of sympathy at the unsatisfied bird. " He
wants something that we don't grow round here,"
he would say to himself; and little by little the
bird's restlessness came to seem to him the concrete
embodiment of certain dim outreachings of his own.
He, too, caught himself straining his gaze beyond
the marsh horizons of Tantramar.
When the winter broke, and the seeping drifts
shrank together, and the brown of the ploughed
fields came through the snow in patches, and the
slopes leading down to the marshland were sud-
denly loud with running water, Kehonka's restless-
ness grew so eager that he almost forgot to feed. It
was time, he thought, for the northward flight to
begin. He would stand for hours, turning first one
dark eye, then the other, toward the soft sky over-
Ube Womesfcfcness of fsebonfea 129
head, expectant of the V-shaped journeying flock,
and the far-off clamour of voices from the South
crying to him in his own tongue. At last, when
the snow was about gone from the open fields, one
evening at the shutting-in of dark, the voices came.
He was lingering at the edge of the goose pond,
the rest having settled themselves for the night,
when he heard the expected sounds. Honk-a-honk,
honk-a-honk, honka, honka, honk, honk, they came
up against the light April wind, nearer, nearer,
nearer. Even his keen eye could not detect them
against the blackness; but up went his wings,
and again and again he screamed to them sono-
rously. In response to his call, their flight swung
lower, and the confusion of their honking seemed
as if it were going to descend about him. But the
wary old gander, their leader, discerned the roofs,
man's handiwork, and suspected treachery. At his
sharp signal the flock, rising again, streamed off
swiftly toward safer feeding-grounds, and left
Kehonka to call and call unanswered. Up to this
moment all his restlessness had not led him to think
of actually deserting the farmstead and the alien
flock. Though not of them he had felt it necessary
to be with them. His instinct for other scenes and
another fellowship had been too little tangible to
130 Ube frtnfc^ of tbe THfltto
move him to the snapping of established ties. But
now, all his desires at once took concrete form. It
was his, it belonged to himself that strong, free
flight, that calling through the sky, that voyaging
northward to secret nesting-places. In that wild
flock which had for a moment swerved downward
to his summons, or in some other flock, was his
mate. It was mating season, and not until now
had he known it.
Nature does sometimes, under the pressure of
great and concentrated desires, make unexpected
effort to meet unforeseen demands. All winter
long, though it was not the season for such growth,
Kehonka's clipped wing-primaries had been striving
to develop. They had now, contrary to all custom,
attained to an inch or so of effective flying web.
Kehonka's heart was near bursting with his desire
as the voices of the unseen flock died away. He
spread his wings to their full extent, ran some
ten paces along the ground, and then, with all his
energies concentrated to the effort, he rose into the
air, and flew with swift-beating wings out into the
dark upon the northward trail. His trouble was
not the lack of wing surface, but the lack of balance.
One wing being so much less in spread than the
other, he felt a fierce force striving to turn him
tTbc Momesicfeness of Itebonfca 13*
over at every stroke. It was the struggle to counter-
act this tendency that wore him out. His first des-
perate effort carried him half a mile. Then he
dropped to earth, in a bed of withered salt-grass
all awash with the full tide of Tantramar. Resting
amid the salt-grass, he tasted such an exultation
of freedom that his heart forgot its soreness over
the flock which had vanished. Presently, however,
he heard again the sound that so thrilled his every
vein. Weird, hollow, echoing with memories and
tidings, it came throbbing up the wind. His own
strong cry went out at once to meet it ke-honk-a,
ke-honk-a, ke-honk-a. The voyagers this time were
flying very low. They came near, nearer, and at
last, in a sudden silence of voices, but a great flap-
ping of wings, they settled down in the salt-grass
all about him.
The place was well enough for a night's halt a
shallow, marshy pool which caught the overflow of
the highest spring tides, and so was not emptied
by the ebb. After its first splashing descent into the
water, which glimmered in pale patches among the
grass stems, every member of the flock sat for some
moments motionless as statues, watchful for un-
known menace; and Kehonka, his very soul trem-
bling with desire achieved, sat motionless among
132 Ubc Irtnoreo of tbe
them. Then, there being no sign of peril at hand,
there was a time of quiet paddling to and fro,
a scuttling of practised bills among the grass-roots,
and Kehonka found himself easily accepted as a
member of the flock. Happiness kept him restless
and on the move long after the others had their
bills tucked under their wings. In the earliest gray
of dawn, when the flock awoke to feed, Kehonka
fed among them as if he had been with them all
the way on their flight from the Mexican plains.
But his feeding was always by the side of a young
female who had not yet paired. It was interrupted
by many little courtesies of touching bill and
bowing head, which were received with plain favour ;
for Kehonka was a handsome and well marked
bird. By the time the sky was red along the east
and strewn with pale, blown feathers of amber
pink toward the zenith, his swift wooing was next
door to winning. He had forgotten his captivity
and clipped wing. He was thinking of a nest in
the wide emptiness of the North.
When the signal-cry came, and the flock took
flight, Kehonka rose with them. But his prelimi-
nary rush along the water was longer than that
of the others, and when the flock formed into flying
order he fell in at the end of the longer leg of the
"FELL WITH A GREAT SPLASH INTO THE CHANNEL OF THE
TANTRAMAR."
Ube fliomesicfcness of "fcebonfca 135
V, behind the weakest of the young geese. This
would have been a humiliation to him, had he taken
thought of it at all; but his attention was all ab-
sorbed in keeping his balance. When the flock
found its pace, and the cold sunrise air began to
whistle past the straight, bullet-like rush of their
flight, a terror grew upon him. He flew much bet-
ter than he had flown the night before ; but he soon
saw that this speed of theirs was beyond him. He
would not yield, however. He would not lag
behind. Every force of his body and his brain went
into that flight, till his eyes blurred and his heart
seemed on the point of bursting. Then, suddenly,
with a faint, despairing note, he lurched aside, shot
downward, and fell with a great splash into the
channel of the Tantramar. With strong wings, and
level, unpausing flight, the flock went on to its
North without him.
Dazed by the fall, and exhausted by the intensity
of his effort, Kehonka floated, moveless, for many
minutes. The flood-tide, however, racing inland,
was carrying him still northward ; and presently he
began to swim in the same direction. In his sick
heart glowed still the vision of the nest in the far-
off solitudes, and he felt that he would find there,
waiting for him, the strong-winged mate who had
is* ttbe Itinoreo of tbe Wilt)
left him behind. Half an hour later another flock
passed honking overhead, and he called to them;
but they were high up, and feeding time was past.
They gave no sign in answer. He made no attempt
to fly after them. Hour after hour he swam on
with the current, working ever north. When the
tide turned he went ashore, still following the river,
till its course changed toward the east; whereupon
he ascended the channel of a small tributary which
flowed in on the north bank. Here and there he
snatched quick mouthfuls of sprouting grasses, but
he was too driven by his desire to pause for food.
Sometimes he tried his wings again, covering now
some miles at each flight, till by and by, losing the
stream because its direction failed him, he found
himself in a broken upland country, where progress
was slow and toilsome. Soon after sunset, troubled
because there was no water near, he again took
wing, and over dark woods which filled him with
apprehension he made his longest flight. When
about spent he caught a small gleaming of water far
below him, and alighted in a little woodland glade
wherein a brook had overflowed low banks.
The noise of his abrupt descent loudly startled
the wet and dreaming woods. It was a matter of
interest to all the furry, furtive ears of the forest
Womesfcfcness of Ifcebonfca 139
for a half-mile round. But it was in no way
repeated. For perhaps fifteen minutes Kehonka
floated, neck erect, head high and watchful, in the
middle of the pool, with no movement except the
slight, unseen oaring of his black-webbed feet,
necessary to keep the current from bearing him into
the gloom of the woods. This gloom, hedging him
on every side, troubled him with a vague fear. But
in the open of the mid-pool, with two or three stars
peering faintly through the misted sky above him,
he felt comparatively safe. At last, very far above,
he heard again that wild calling of his fellows,
honk-a-honk, honk-a-honk, honka, honka, honk,
honk, high and dim and ghostly, for these rough
woodlands had no appeal for the journeying flocks.
Remote as the voices were, however, Kehonka an-
swered at once. His keen, sonorous, passionate
cry rang strangely on the night, three times. The
flock paid no heed to it whatever, but sped on north-
ward with unvarying flight and clamour; and as
the wizard noise passed beyond, Kehonka, too
weary to take wing, followed eagerly to the north-
erly shore of the pool, ran up the wet bank, and
stood straining after it.
His wings were half spread as he stood there,
quivering with his passion. In his heart was the
140 Ube Ifcfnorefc of tbe
hunger of the quest. In his eyes was the vision
of nest and mate, where the serviceberry thicket
grew by the wide sub-arctic waters. The night
wind blew steadily away from him to the under-
brush close by, or even in his absorption he would
have noticed the approach of a menacing, musky
smell. But every sense was now numb in the pres-
ence of his great desire. There was no warning
for him.
The underbrush rustled, ever so softly. Then
a small, delicately moving, fine-furred shape, the
discourager of quests, darted stealthily forth, and
with a bound that was feathery in its blown light-
ness, seeming to be uplifted by the wide-plumed tail
that balanced it, descended on Kehonka's body.
There was a thin honk, cut short by keen teeth
meeting with a crunch and a twist in the glossy
slim blackness of Kehonka's neck. The struggle
lasted scarcely more than two heart-beats. The wide
wings pounded twice or thrice upon the ground,
in fierce convulsion. Then the red fox, with a side-
wise jerk of his head, flung the heavy, trailing
carcass into a position for its easy carrying, and
trotted off with it into the darkness of the woods.
SAVOURY MEATS
Savoury
|N the bushy thicket the doe stood trem-
bling over the young one to which she
had given birth in the early part of the
night. A light wind began to breathe just before
dawn, and in its languid throbbing the slim twigs
and half unfolded leaves from time to time rustled
stiffly. Over the tree-tops, and from the open
spaces in the wood, could be seen the first pallor of
approaching day; and one pink thread, a finger
long, outlined a lonely fragment of the horizon.
But in the bushy thicket it was dark. The mother
could not see her little one, but kept feeling it anx-
iously and lightly with her silken nose. She was
waiting till it should be strong enough to rise and
nurse.
As the pink thread became scarlet and crept
along a wider arc, and the cold light spread, there
came from a far-off hillside the trailing echo of
a howl. It was the cry of a wolf hunting alone.
It hardly penetrated the depths of the bushy thicket,
143
144 tlbe frtnt>re& of tbe TTCUlfc
but the doe heard it, and faced about to the point
whence it came, and stamped angrily with slim,
sharp hoof. Her muzzle was held high, and her
nostrils expanded tensely, weighing and analysing
every scent that came on the chill air. But the
dread cry was not repeated. No smell of danger
breathed in her retreat. The light stole at last
through the tangled branches. Then the little
one struggled to its feet, its spotted sides still
heaving under the stress of their new expansion;
and the doe, with lowered head and neck bent far
around, watched it with great eyes as it pressed
its groping mouth against her udder and learned to
feed.
Presently the sides of branch and stem and leaf
facing the dawn took on a hue of pink. A male
song-sparrow, not yet feeling quite at home after
his journey from the South, sang hesitatingly from
the top of a bush. A pair of crows squawked gut-
turally and confidentially in a tree-top, where they
contemplated nesting. Everything was wet, but
it was a tonic and stimulating wetness, like that of
a vigorous young swimmer climbing joyously out
of a cool stream. The air had a sharp savour, a
smell of gummy aromatic buds, and sappy twigs,
and pungent young leaves. But the body of the
Savours /Beats MS
scent, which seemed like the very person of spring,
was the affluence of the fresh earth, broken and
turned up to the air by millions of tiny little thrust-
ing blades. Presently, when the light fell into the
thicket with a steeper slant, the doe stepped away,
and left her little one lying, hardly to be discerned,
on a spotted heap of dead leaves and moss. She
stole noiselessly out of the thicket. She was going
to pasture on the sprouting grasses of a neighbour-
ing wild meadow, and to drink at the amber stream
that bordered it. She knew that, in her absence,
the little one's instinct would teach him to keep
so still that no marauder's eye would be likely to
detect him.
Two or three miles away from the thicket, in the
heart of the same deep-wooded wilderness, stood a
long, low-roofed log cabin, on the edge of a narrow
clearing. The yard was strewn with chips, some
fresh cut and some far gone in decay. A lean
pig rooted among them, turning up the black
soil that lay beneath. An axe and black iron
pot stood on the battered step before the door.
In the window appeared the face of an old man,
gazing blankly out upon the harsh-featured scene.
The room where the old man sat was roughly
ceiled and walled with brown boards. The sunlight
146 ttbe ftfn&refc of tbe Wilfc
streamed in the window, showing the red stains of
rust on the cracked kitchen stove, and casting an
oblong figure of brightness on the faded patchwork
quilt which covered the low bed in the corner. Two
years earlier John Hackett had been an erect and
powerful woodsman, strong in the task of carving
himself a home out of the unyielding wilderness.
Then his wife had died of a swift consumption. A
few weeks later he had been struck down with paral-
ysis, from which he partly recovered to find himself
grown suddenly senile and a helpless invalid. On
his son, Silas, fell the double task of caring for
him and working the scant, half-subjugated farm.
Streaks and twines of yellowish white were scat-
tered thickly amid the ragged blackness of the old
man's hair and beard. The strong, gaunt lines of
his features consorted strangely with the piteous
weakness that now trembled in his eyes and on his
lower lip. He sat in a big home-made easy chair,
which Silas had constructed for him by sawing a
quarter-section out of a hogshead. This rude frame
the lad had lined laboriously with straw and coarse
sacking, and his father had taken great delight
in it.
A soiled quilt of blue, magenta, and white squares
wrapped the old man's legs, as he sat by the window
Savours /Beats 147
waiting for Silas to come in. His withered hands
picked ceaselessly at the quilt.
" I wish Si'd come ! I want my breakfast ! " he
kept repeating, now wistfully, now fretfully. His
gaze wandered from the window to the stove, from
the stove to the window, with slow regularity.
When the pig came rooting into his line of vision,
it vexed him, and he muttered peevishly to himself.
" That there hog'll hev the whole place rooted up.
I wish Si'd come and drive him out of that ! "
At last Si came. The old man's face smoothed
itself, and a loving light came into his eyes as the
lad adjusted the pillow at his head. The doings
of the hog were forgotten.
Si bustled about to get breakfast, the old man's
eyes following every movement. The tea was placed
on the back of the stove to draw. A plate of cold
buckwheat cakes was brought out of the cupboard
and set on the rude table. A cup, with its handle
broken off, was half filled with molasses, for " sweet-
enin'," and placed beside the buckwheat cakes.
Then Si cut some thick slices of salt pork and
began to fry them. They " sizzled " cheerfully in
the pan, and to Si, with his vigorous morning appe-
tite, the odour was rare and fine. But the old man
was troubled by it. His hands picked faster at
the quilt.
Ube Itinoreo of tbe THIlUo
" Si," said he, in a quavering voice, that rose and
fell without regard to the force of the words, " I
know ye can't help it, but my stomach's turned agin
salt pork ! It's been a-comin' on me this long while,
that I couldn't eat it no more. An' now it's come.
Pork, pork, pork, I can't eat it no more, Si !
But there, I know ye can't help it. Ye're a good
boy, a kind son, Si, and ye can't help it ! "
Si went on turning the slices with an old fork
till the quavering voice stopped. Then he cried,
cheerfully :
" Try an* eat a leetle mite of it, father. This
'ere tea's fine, an'll sort of wash it down. An'
while I'm a-working in the back field this morning
I'll try and think of somethin' to kinder tickle your
appetite ! "
The old man shook his head gloomily.
" I can't eat no more fried pork, Si," said he,
" not if I die fur it ! I know ye can't help it ! An'
it don't matter, fur I won't be here much longer
anyways. It'll be a sight better fur you, Si, when
I'm gone but I kinder don't like to leave ye here
all alone. Seems like I kinder keep the house warm
fur ye till ye come home! I don't like to think of
ye comin' in an' findin' the house all empty, Si!
But it's been powerful empty, with jist you an'
Savours /Beats 149
me, sence mother died. It useter be powerful good,
Si, didn't it, comin' home and findin' her a-waitin'
fur us, an' hot supper ready on the table, an' the
lamp a-shinin' cheerful? An' what suppers she
could cook! D'ye mind the pies, an' the stews, an'
the fried deer's meat? I could eat some of that
fried deer's meat now, Si. An' I feel like it would
make me better. It ain't no fault of yours, Si, but
I can't eat no more salt pork ! "
Si lifted the half-browned slices of yellow and
crimson on to a plate, poured the gravy over them,
and set the plate on the table. Then he dragged
his father's chair over to the table, helped him to
tea and buckwheat cakes and molasses, and sat
down to his own meal. The fried pork disappeared
swiftly in his strong young jaws, while his father
nibbled reluctantly at the cold and soggy cakes.
Si cleared the table, fed the fire, dragged his father
back to the sunny window, and then took down the
long gun, with the powder-horn and shot-pouch,
which hung on pegs behind the door.
The old man noticed what he was doing.
" Ain't ye goin' to work in the back field, Silas? "
he asked, plaintively.
" No, father," said the lad, " I'm goin' a-gunnin'.
Ef I don't have some of that fried deer's meat fur
is ^be frtnt>reo of tbe TWUU>
your supper to-night, like mother useter fix fur
ye, my name ain't Silas Hackett! "
He set a tin of fresh water on the window ledge
within reach of his father's hand, gave one tender
touch to the pillow, and went out quickly. The
old man's eyes strained after him till he disappeared
in the woods.
Silas walked with the noiseless speed of the
trained woodsman. His heart was big with pity for
his father, and heavy with a sense of approaching
loss. But instinctively his eyes took note of the
new life beginning to surge about him in myriad
and tumultuous activity. It surged, too, in the
answering current of his strong young blood; and
from time to time he would forget his heaviness
utterly for a moment, thrilled through and through
by a snatch of bird song, or a glimpse of rose-red
maple buds, or a gleam of ineffable blueness through
the tree-tops, or a strange, clean-smelling wind that
made him stop and stretch his lungs to take it in.
Suddenly he came upon a fresh deer-track.
The sorcery of spring was forgotten. His heavi-
ness was forgotten. He was now just the hunter,
keen upon the trail of the quarry. Bending low,
silent as a shadow, peering like a panther, he slipped
between the great trunks, and paused in the fringe
Savours flDeats 15
of downy catkined willows that marked the
meadow's edge. On the other side of the meadow
he saw the form of a doe, drinking. He heard on
the wet air the sharp, chiming brawl of the brook,
fretted by some obstruction. He took a careful
aim. The doe lifted her head, satisfied, and
ready to return to her young one in the thicket.
A shot rang out across the meadow, and she sprang
into the air, to fall back with her slender muzzle in
the stream, her forelegs bent beneath her, her hind
legs twitching convulsively for a moment before
they stiffened out upon the grass.
As Silas staggered homeward he was no longer
the keen hunter. He no longer heard the summons
of the spring morning. All he thought of was the
pleasure which would light up the wan and piteous
face of the old man in the chair by the window
when the savoury smell of the frying deer's meat
would fill the dusky air of the cabin. As he crossed
the chip-strewn yard, he saw his father's face
watching for him. He dropped his burden at the
door, and entered, panting and triumphant.
" I've got it fur ye, father ! " he cried, softly
touching the tremulous hands with his big brown
fingers.
" I'm right glad, Si," quavered the old man, " but
iltnt>re& of tbe WtR>
I'm a sight gladder to see ye back ! The hours is
long when ye're not by me! Oh, but ye do mind
me of your mother, Si ! "
Si took the carcass to the shed, dressed it care-
fully, and then, after cutting several thick slices
from the haunch, stowed it in the little black hole
of a cellar, beneath the cabin floor. He put some
fair potatoes to boil, and proceeded to fry the juicy
steaks which the old man loved. The fragrance of
them filled the cabin. The old man's eyes grew
brighter, and his hands less tremulous. When the
smoking and sputtering dish was set upon the table,
Silas again drew up the big chair, and the two made
a joyous meal. The old man ate as he had not
eaten for months, and the generous warmth of the
fresh meat put new life into his withered veins. His
under lip grew firmer, his voice steadier, his brain
more clear. With a gladness that brought tears
into his eyes, Silas marked the change.
" Father," he cried, " ye look more like yerself
than I've seen ye these two years past ! "
And the old man replied, with a ring of returning
hope in his voice :
" This 'ere deer's meat's more'n any medicine.
Ef I git well, ever, seems to me it'll be according to
what I eat or don't eat, more'n anything else."
"TWO GKEEN EVES, CLOSE TO THE GROUND.
Savours /iDeats 155
" Whatever ye think'll help ye, that ye shall hev,
father," declared Silas, " ef I have to crawl on
hands an' knees all day an' all night fur it ! "
Meanwhile, in the heart of the bushy thicket, on
the spotted heap of leaves, lay a little fawn, waiting
for its mother. It was trembling now with hunger
and chill. But its instinct kept it silent all day long.
The afternoon light died out. Twilight brought a
bitter chill to the depths of the thicket. When night
came, hunger, cold, and fear at last overcame the
little one's muteness. From time to time it gave
a plaintive cry, then waited, and listened for its
mother's coming. The cry was feeble, but there
were keen ears in the forest to catch it. There came
a stealthy crackling in the bushes, and the fawn
struggled to its feet with a glad expectation. Two
green eyes, close to the ground, floated near. There
was a pounce, a scuffle and then the soft, fierce
whispering sound of a wildcat satisfying itself with
blood.
ant>
HOLLOW, booming, ominous cry, a
great voice of shadowy doom, rang out
suddenly and startled the dark edges of
the forest. It sounded across the glimmering pas-
tures, vibrating the brown-violet dusk, and made
the lame old woman in the cabin on the other side
of the clearing shiver with vague fears.
But not vague was the fear which shook the soul
of the red squirrel where he crouched, still for once
in his restless life, in the crotch of a thick spruce-
top. Not vague was the fear of the brooding grouse
in the far-off withe-wood thicket, though the sound
came to her but dimly and she knew that the menace
of it was not, at the moment, for her. And least
vague of all was the terror of the usually unterrified
weasel, from whose cruel little eyes the red flame
of the blood-lust faded suddenly, as the glow dies
out of a coal; for the dread voice sounded very
close to him, and it required all his nerve to hold
59
160 trbe *Rfnore& of tbe 7HHU&
himself rigidly motionless and to refrain from the
start which would have betrayed him to his death.
" Whoo-hoo-oo-h' oo-oo !" boomed the call again,
seeming to come from the tree-tops, the thickets,
the sky, and the earth, all at once, so that creatures
many hundred yards apart trembled simultaneously,
deeming that the clutch of fate was already at their
necks. But to the Boy, as he let down the pasture
bars with a clatter and turned the new-milked cows
in among the twilight-coloured hillocks, the sound
brought no terror. He smiled as he said to himself :
" There's Hushwing again at his hunting. I must
give him a taste of what it feels like to be hunted."
Then he strolled across the pasture, between the
black stumps, the blueberry patches, the tangles of
wild raspberry; pushed softly through the fringe
of wild cherry and young birch saplings, and crept,
soundless as a snake, under the branches of a low-
growing hemlock. Peering out from this covert he
could see, rising solitary at the back of an open
glade, the pale and naked trunk of a pine-tree, which
the lightning had shattered.
The Boy's eyes were keen as a fish-hawk's, and
he kept them fixed upon the top of the pine trunk.
Presently it seemed as if the spirit of the dusk took
shadowy form for an instant. There was a sound-
TTbe Bos anfc Husbwing 161
less sweeping of wings down the glade, and the next
moment the pine trunk looked about two feet taller
in the Boy's eyes. The great horned owl " Hush-
wing," the Boy had christened him, for the ghostly
silence of his flight had returned to his favourite
post of observation, whereon he stood so erect and
motionless that he seemed a portion of the pine
trunk itself.
The Boy lay still as a watching lynx, being minded
to spy on Hushwing at his hunting. A moment
more, and then came again that hollow summons :
Whoo-hoo-hoo-who'o-oo; and the great owl turned
his head to listen as the echo floated through the
forest.
The Boy heard, a few paces distant from him,
the snap of a twig where a startled hare stirred
clumsily. The sound was faint; indeed so faint
that he was hardly sure whether he heard or imag-
ined it; but to the wonderfully wide and sensitive
drum of the owl's ear it sounded sharply away down
at the foot of the glade. Ere the Boy could draw
a second breath he saw great wings hovering at
the edge of the thicket close at hand. He saw big,
clutching talons outstretched from thick-feathered
legs, while round eyes, fiercely gleaming, flamed
upon his in passing as they searched the bush. Once
162 tlbe "fctnoreo of tbe TKHUfc
the great wings backed off, foiled by some obstruc-
tion which the Boy could not see. Then they
pounced with incredible speed. There was a flap-
ping and a scuffle, followed by a loud squeak; and
Hushwing winnowed off down the glade bearing
the limp form of the hare in his talons. He did
not stop at the pine trunk, but passed on toward the
deeper woods.
" He's got a mate and a nest 'way back in the
cedar swamp, likely," said the Boy, as he got up,
stretched his cramped limbs, and turned his face
homeward. As he went, he schemed with subtle
woodcraft for the capture of the wary old bird.
He felt impelled to try his skill against the ma-
rauder's inherited cunning and suspicion; and he
knew that, if he should succeed, there would remain
Hushwing's yet fiercer and stronger mate to care
for the little owlets in the nest.
When Hushwing had deposited his prey beside
the nest, in readiness for the next meal of his ever-
hungry nestlings, he sailed off again for a hunt on
his own account. Now it chanced that a rare visitor,
a wanderer from the cliffy hills which lay many
miles back of Hushwing's cedar swamp, had come
down that day to see if there might not be a sheep
or a calf to be picked up on the outskirts of the
ZCbe JSos anfc Wusbwtna 163
settlements. It was years since a panther had been
seen in that neighbourhood it was years, indeed,
since that particular panther had strayed from his
high fastnesses, where game was plentiful and none
dared poach on his preserves. But just now a
camp of hunters on his range had troubled him
seriously and scattered his game. Gnawing his
heart with rage and fear, he had succeeded so far
in evading their noisy search, and had finally come
to seek vengeance by taking tribute of their flocks.
He had traversed the cedar swamp, and emerging
upon the wooded uplands he had come across a cow-
path leading down to the trampled brink of a pond.
" Here," he thought to himself, " will the cattle
come to drink, and I will kill me a yearling heifer."
On the massive horizontal limb of a willow which
overhung the trodden mire of the margin he
stretched himself to await the coming of the quarry.
A thick-leaved beech bough, thrusting in among
the willow branches, effectually concealed him.
Only from above was he at all visible, his furry
ears and the crown of his head just showing over
the leafage.
The aerial path of Hushwing, from his nest in
the swamp to his watch-tower on the clearing's
edge, led him past the pool and the crouching
164 ZEbe > Rin&re& of tbe TKI1U&
panther. He had never seen a panther, and he had
nothing in his brain-furnishing to fit so formidable
a beast. On chance, thinking perhaps to strike a
mink at his fishing on the pool's brink, he sounded
his Whoo-hoo-hoo-who'o-oo! as he came near. The
panther turned his head at the sound, rustling the
leaves, over which appeared his furry ear-tips. The
next instant, to his rage and astonishment, he re-
ceived a smart blow on the top of his head, and
sharp claws tore the tender skin about his ears.
With a startled snarl he turned and struck upward
with his armed paw, a lightning stroke, at the un-
seen assailant.
But he struck the empty air. Already was Hush-
wing far on his way, a gliding ghost. He was puz-
zled over the strange animal which he had struck;
but while his wits were yet wondering, those mira-
cles of sensitiveness, those living telephone films
which served him for ears, caught the scratching of
light claws on the dry bark of a hemlock some ten
paces aside from his line of flight. Thought itself
could hardly be more silent and swift than was
his turning. The next moment his noiseless wings
overhung a red squirrel, where it lay flattened to
the bark in the crotch of the hemlock. Some dream
of the hunt or the flight had awakened the little
HE STRUCK THE EMPTY AIR.'
167
animal to an unseasonable activity and betrayed it
to its doom. There was a shrill squeal as those
knife-like talons met in the small, furry body; then
Hushwing carried off his supper to be eaten com-
fortably upon his watch-tower.
Meanwhile the Boy was planning the capture of
the wise old owl. He might have shot the bird
easily, but wanton slaughter was not his object, and
he was no partisan as far as the wild creatures were
concerned. All the furtive folk, fur and feather
^like, were interesting to him, even dear to him
in varying degrees. He had no grudge against
Hushwing for his slaughter of the harmless hare
and grouse, for did not the big marauder show equal
zest in the pursuit of mink and weasel, snake and
rat? Even toward that embodied death, the malig-
nant weasel, indeed, the Boy had no antagonism,
making allowance as he did for the inherited blood-
lust which drove the murderous little animal to
defy all the laws of the wild kindred and kill, kill,
kill, for the sheer delight of killing. The Boy's
purpose now in planning the capture of Hushwing
was, first of all, to test his own woodcraft; and,
second, to get the bird under his close observation.
He had a theory that the big horned owl might
be tamed so as to become an interesting and highly
168 Ube ltin&re& ot tbe
instructive pet. In any case, he was sure that Hush-
wing in captivity might be made to contribute
much to his knowledge, and knowledge, first-
hand knowledge, of all the furtive kindred of the
wild, knowledge such as the text-books on natural
history which his father's library contained could
not give him, was what he continually craved.
On the following afternoon the Boy went early
to the neighbourhood of Hushwing's watch-tower.
At the edge of a thicket, half concealed, but open
toward the dead pine trunk, was a straggling colony
of low blueberry bushes. Where the blueberry
bushes rose some eight or ten inches above the top
of a decaying birch stump he fixed a snare of rabbit
wire. To the noose he gave a diameter of about
a foot, supporting it horizontally in the tops of the
bushes just over the stump. The cord from the
noose he carried to his hiding-place of the previous
evening, under the thick-growing hemlock. Then
he went home, did up some chores upon which he
depended for his pocket-money, and arranged with
the hired man to relieve him for that evening of
his duty of driving the cows back to pasture after
the milking. Just before the afternoon began to
turn from brown amber to rose and lilac he went
back to the glade of the pine trunk. This time he
TTbe JSos a^ Knsbwing 169
took with him the body of one of the big gray rats
which infested his father's grain-bins. The rat
he fixed securely upon the top of the stump among
the blueberry bushes, exactly under the centre of
the snare. Then he broke off the tops of a berry
bush, tied the stubs together loosely, drew them
over, ran the string once around the stump, and
carried the end of the string back to his hiding-
place beside the cord of the snare. Pulling the
string gently, he smiled with satisfaction to hear
the broken twigs scratch seductively on the stump,
like the claws of a small animal. Then he lay down,
both cords in his hand, and composed himself to
a season of patient waiting.
He had not long to wait, however; for Hush-
wing was early at his hunting that night. The Boy
turned away his scrutiny for just one moment, as
it seemed to him; but when he looked again there
was Hushwing at his post, erect, apparently part
of the pine trunk. Then Whoo-hoo-hoo-who'o-
oo I sounded his hollow challenge, though the
sunset colour was not yet fading in the west. In-
stantly the Boy pulled his string; and from the
stump among the blueberry bushes came a gentle
scratching, as of claws. Hushwing heard it.
Lightly, as if blown on a swift wind, he was at
i7 Ube Utinoreo of tbe TOlo
the spot. He struck. His great talons transfixed
the rat. His wings beat heavily as he strove to
lift it, to bear it off to his nestlings. But what
a heavy beast it was, to be sure ! The next moment
the noose of rabbit wire closed inexorably upon
his legs. He loosed his grip upon the rat and sprang
into the air, bewildered and terrified. But his wings
would not bear him the way he wished to go. In-
stead, a strange, irresistible force was drawing him,
for all the windy beating of his pinions, straight to
an unseen doom in the heart of a dense-growing
hemlock.
A moment more and he understood his discomfi-
ture and the completeness of it. The Boy stood
forth from his hiding-place, grinning; and Hush-
wing knew that his fate was wholly in the hands
of this master being, whom no wild thing dared
to hunt. Courageous to the last, he hissed fiercely
and snapped his sharp beak in defiance; but the
Boy drew him down, muffled wing, beak, and talons
in his heavy homespun jacket, bundled him under
his arm, and carried him home in triumph.
" You'll find the rats in our oat-bins," said he,
" fatter than any weasel in the wood, my Hush-
wing."
The oat-bins were in a roomy loft at one end
" SETTLED HIMSELF, MUCH DISCONCERTED, ON THE BACK OF
AN OLD HAIRCLOTH SOFA."
Ube JSos ant> Kusbwino 173
of the wood-shed. The loft was lighted by a large
square window in the gable, arranged to swing
back on hinges like a door, for convenience in pass-
ing the bags of grain in and out. Besides three
large oat-bins, it contained a bin for barley, one
for buckwheat, and one for bran. The loft was
also used as a general storehouse for all sorts of
stuff that would not keep well in a damp cellar;
and it was a very paradise for rats. From the
wood-shed below admittance to the loft was gained
by a flight of open board stairs and a spacious trap-
door.
Mounting these stairs and lifting the trap-door,
the boy carefully undid the wire noose from Hush-
wing's feathered legs, avoiding the keen talons
which promptly clutched at his fingers. Then he
unrolled the coat, and the big bird, flapping his
wings eagerly, soared straight for the bright square
of the window. But the sash was strong; and
the glass was a marvel which he had never before
encountered. In a few moments he gave up the
effort, floated back to the duskiest corner of the loft,
and settled himself, much disconcerted, on the
back of an old haircloth sofa which had lately been
banished from the sitting-room. Here he sat im-
movable, only hissing and snapping his formidable
174 Ubc "RinDret) of tbe TWIU&
beak when the Boy approached him. His heart
swelled with indignation and despair; and, real-
ising the futility of flight, he stood at bay. As the
Boy moved around him he kept turning his great
horned head as if it were on a pivot, without
changing the position of his body; and his round,
golden eyes, with their piercing black pupils, met
those of his captor with an unflinching directness
beyond the nerve of any four-footed beast, however
mighty, to maintain. The daunting mastery of
the human gaze, which could prevail over the gaze
of the panther or the wolf, was lost upon the tame-
less spirit of Hushwing. Noting his courage, the
Boy smiled approval and left him alone to recover
his equanimity.
The Boy, as days went by, made no progress
whatever in his acquaintance with his captive, who
steadfastly met all his advances with defiance of
hissings and snapping beak. But by opening the
bins and sitting motionless for an hour or two in
the twilight the Boy was able to make pretty careful
study of Hushwing's method of hunting. The
owl would sit a long time unstirring, the gleam
of his eyes never wavering. Then suddenly he
would send forth his terrifying cry, and listen.
Sometimes there would be no result. At other
Bos ano Kusbwing 175
times the cry would come just as some big rat,
grown over-confident, was venturing softly across
the floor or down into the toothsome grain. Start-
led out of all common sense by that voice of doom at
his ear, he would make a desperate rush for cover.
There would be a scrambling on the floor or a
scurrying in the bin. Then the great, dim wings
would hover above the sound. There would be a
squeak, a brief scuffle; and Hushwing would float
back downily to devour his prey on his chosen perch,
the back of the old haircloth sofa.
For a fortnight the Boy watched him assiduously,
spending almost every evening in the loft. At
length came an evening when not a rat would stir
abroad, and Hushwing's hunting-calls were hooted
in vain. After two hours of vain watching the
Boy's patience gave out, and he went off to bed,
promising his prisoner a good breakfast in the
morning to compensate him for the selfish prudence
of the rats. That same night, while every one in
the house slept soundly, it chanced that a thieving
squatter from the other end of the settlement came
along with a bag, having designs upon the well-
filled oat-bins.
The squatter knew where there was a short and
handy ladder leaning against the tool-house. He
176 ttbe ltfnt>re& of tbe
had always been careful to replace it. He also
knew how to lift, with his knife, the iron hook
which fastened but did not secure the gable
window on the inside. To-night he went very
stealthily, because, though it was dark, there was
no wind to cover the sound of his movements.
Stealthily he brought the ladder and raised it
against the gable of the loft. Noiselessly he
mounted, carrying his bag, till his bushy, hatless
head was just on a level with the window-sill.
Without a sound, as he imagined, his knife-edge
raised the hook but there was a sound, the ghost
of a sound, and the marvellous ear of Hushwing
heard it. As the window swung back the thief's
bushy crown appeared just over the sill. " Whoo-
h'oo-oo ! " shouted Hushwing, angry and hungry,
swooping at the seductive mark. He struck it fair
and hard, his claws gashing the scalp, his wings
dealing an amazing buffet.
Appalled by the cry and the stroke, the sharp
clutch, the great smother of wing, the rascal
screamed with terror, lost his hold, and fell to
the ground. Nothing was further from his imagi-
nation than that his assailant should be a mere owl.
It was rather some kind of a grossly inconsistent
hobgoblin that he thought of, sent to punish him for
JSos anfc Hiusbwing 177
the theft of his neighbour's grain. Leaving the
ladder where it fell, and the empty bag beside it,
he ran wildly from the haunted spot, and never
stopped till he found himself safe inside his shanty
door. As for Hushwing, he did not wait to investi-
gate this second mistake of his, but made all haste
back to his nest in the swamp.
The frightened outcry of the thief awoke the
sleepers in the house, and presently the Boy and
his father came with a lantern to find out what
was the matter. The fallen ladder, the empty bag,
the open window of the loft, told their own story.
When the Boy saw that Hushwing was gone, his
face fell with disappointment. He had grown very
fond of his big, irreconcilable, dauntless captive.
" We owe Master Hushwing a right good turn
this night," said the Boy's father, laughing. " My
grain's going to last longer after this, I'm thinking."
" Yes," sighed the Boy, " Hushwing has earned
his freedom. I suppose I mustn't bother him any
more with snares and things."
Meanwhile, the great horned owl was sitting erect
on the edge of his nest in the swamp, one talon
transfixing the torn carcass of a mink, while his
shining eyes, round like little suns, shone happily
upon the big-headed, ragged-feathered, hungry
brood of owlets at his feet.
H treason of mature
i HE full moon of October, deep orange in
a clear, deep sky, hung large and some-
what distorted just over the wooded hills
that rimmed the lake. Through the ancient forest,
a mixed growth of cedar, water-ash, black poplar,
and maple, with here and there a group of hem-
locks on a knoll, the light drained down confusedly,
a bewildering chaos of bright patches, lines, and
reticulations amid breadths of blackness. On the
half-overshadowed cove, which here jutted in from
the lake, the mingling of light and darkness
wrought an even more elusive mystery than in the
wood. For the calm levels just breathed, as it were,
with a fading remembrance of the wind which had
blown till sundown over the open lake. The pulse
of this breathing whimsically shifted the reflections,
and caused the pallid water-lily leaves to uplift and
appeal like the glimmering hands of ghosts. The
stillness was perfect, save for a ceaseless, faintly
rhythmic h-r-r-r-r-r-ing, so light that only the most
181
Ifctufcrefc ot tbe
finely attentive ear, concentrated to the effort, might
distinguish it. This was the eternal breathing of
the ancient wood. In such a silence there was noth-
ing to hint of the thronging, furtive life on every
side, playing under the moonlit glamour its uneven
game with death. If a twig snapped in the dis-
tance, if a sudden rustle somewhere stirred the moss
- it might mean love, it might mean the inevi-
table tragedy.
Under a tall water-ash some rods back from
the shore of the cove, there was a sharp, clacking
sound, and a movement which caused a huge blur
of lights and shadows to differentiate itself all
at once into the form of a gigantic bull-moose.
The animal had been resting quite motionless till
the tickling of some insect at the back of his ear
disturbed him. Lowering his head, he lifted a
hind leg and scratched the place with sharp strokes
of his sprawling, deeply cloven hoof; and the two
loose sections of the hoof clacked together between
each stroke like castanets. Then he moved a step
forward, till his head and fore-shoulders came out
into the full illumination of a little lane of moon-
light pouring in betweeen the tree-tops.
He was a prince of his kind, as he stood there
with long, hooked, semi-prehensile muzzle thrust
H treason of IRature 183
forward, his nostrils dilating to savour the light airs
which drifted almost imperceptibly through the
forest. His head, in this attitude, an attitude of
considering watchfulness, was a little lower than
the thin-maned ridge of his shoulders, over which
lay back the vast palmated adornment of his antlers.
These were like two curiously outlined, hollowed
leaves, serrated with some forty prongs; and their
tips, at the point of widest expansion, were little
less than six feet apart. His eyes, though small
for the rough-hewn bulk of his head, were keen, and
ardent with passion and high courage. His ears,
large and coarse for one of the deer tribe to possess,
were set very low on his skull to such a degree,
indeed, as to give somehow a daunting touch of
the monstrous to his massive dignity. His neck
was short and immensely powerful, to support the
gigantic head and antlers. From his throat hung a
strange, ragged, long-haired tuft, called by woods-
men the "bell." His chest was of great depth, telling
of exhaustless lung power; and his long forelegs
upbore his mighty fore-shoulders so that their gaunt
ridge was nearly seven feet from the ground. From
this height his short back fell away on a slope to
hindquarters disproportionately scant, so that had
his appearance been altogether less imposing and
184 Ube Irtnorefc of tbe
formidable, he might have looked grotesque from
some points of view. In the moonlight, of course,
his colour was just a cold gray; but in the daytime
it would have shown a rusty brown, paling and
yellowing slightly on the under parts and inside
the legs.
Having sniffed the air for several minutes with-
out discerning anything to interest him, the great
bull bethought him of his evening meal. With
a sudden blowing out of his breath, he heaved his
bulk about and made for the waterside, crashing
down the bushes and making, in sheer wantonness,
a noise that seemed out of keeping with the time
and place. Several times he paused to thrash
amid the undergrowth with his antlers. Reaching
the water, he plunged in, thigh-deep, with great
splashings, and sent the startled waves chasing each
other in bright curves to the farther shore. There
he stood and began pulling recklessly at the leaves
and shoots of the water-lilies. He was hungry,
indeed, yet his mind was little engrossed with his
feeding.
As a rule, the moose, for all his bulk and seeming
clumsiness, moves through the forest as soundlessly
as a weasel. He plants his wide hoofs like thistle-
down, insinuates his spread of antlers through the
H treason of mature 185
tangle like a snake, and befools his enemies with
the nicest craft of the wilderness.
But this was the rutting season. The great bull
was looking for his mate. He had a wild sus-
picion that the rest of the world was conspiring to
keep him from her, and therefore he felt a fierce
indignation against the rest of the world. He was
ready to imagine a rival behind every bush. He
wanted to find these rivals and fight them to the
death. His blood was in an insurrection of mad-
ness, and suspense, and sweetness, and desire. He
cared no more for craft, for concealment. He
wanted all the forest to know just where he was
that his mate might come to be loved, that his
rivals might come to be ground beneath his antlers
and his hoofs. Therefore he went wildly, making
all the noise he could; while the rest of the forest
folk, unseen and withdrawn, looked on with dis-
approval and with expectation of the worst.
As he stood in the cool water, pulling and munch-
ing the lilies, there came a sound that stiffened him
to instant movelessness. Up went his head, the
streams trickling from it silverly; and he listened
with every nerve of his body. It was a deeply
sonorous, booming call, with a harsh catch in it,
but softened to music by the distance. It came
i86 ttbe nmfcrefc of tbe
from some miles down the opposite shore of the
lake. To the great bull's ears it was the sweetest
music he could dream of the only music, in fact,
that interested him. It was the voice of his mate,
calling him to the trysting-place.
He gave answer at once to the summons, con-
tracting his flanks violently as he propelled the
sound from his deep lungs. To one listening far
down the lake the call would have sounded beauti-
ful in its way, though lugubrious a wild, vast,
incomprehensible voice, appropriate to the solitude.
But to a near-by listener it must have sounded both
monstrous and absurd like nothing else so much
as the effort of a young farmyard bull to mimic
the braying of an ass. Nevertheless, to one who
could hear aright, it was a noble and splendid call,
vital with all sincerity of response and love and
elemental passion.
Having sent forth his reply, he waited for no
more. He was consumed with fierce anxiety lest
some rival should also hear and answer the invi-
tation. Dashing forward into the deep water, he
swam at great speed straight across the cove, leav-
ing a wide wake behind him. The summons came
again, but he could not reply while he was swim-
ming. As soon as he reached land he answered, and
" HE GAVE ANSWER AT ONCE TO THE SUMMONS."
B treason of mature 189
then started in mad haste down the shore, taking
advantage of the open beach where there was any,
but for the most part hidden in the trees, where
his progress was loudly marked by the crashing
and trampling of his impatience.
All the furtive kindred, great as well as small,
bold as well as timorous, gave him wide berth. A
huge black bear, pleasantly engaged in ripping
open an ant stump right in his path, stepped aside
into the gloom with a supercilious deferring.
Farther down the lake a panther lay out along a
maple limb, and watched the ecstatic moose rush
by beneath. He dug his claws deeper into the
bark, and bared his fangs thirstily; but he had no
wish to attempt the perilous enterprise of stopping
the moose on his love errand. From time to time,
from that same enchanted spot down the lake, came
the summons, growing reassuringly nearer; and
from time to time the journeying bull would pause
in his stride to give answer. Little flecks of foam
blew from his nostrils, and his flanks were heaving,
but his heart was joyous, and his eyes bright with
anticipation.
Meanwhile, what was it that awaited him, in
that enchanted spot by the waterside under the full
moon, on which the eyes of his eager imagination
19 ftbe Itinorefc of tbc TKHilt>
were fixed so passionately as he crashed his wild
way through the night? There was the little open
of firm gravelly beach, such as all his tribe affected
as their favoured place of trysting. But no brown
young cow cast her shadow on the white gravel,
standing with forefeet wide apart and neck out-
stretched to utter her desirous call. The beach lay
bright and empty. Just back of it stood a spreading
maple, its trunk veiled in a thicket of viburnum
and withe-wood. Back of this again a breadth of
lighted open, carrying no growth but low kalmia
scrub. It was a highly satisfactory spot for the
hunter who follows his sport in the calling season,
There was no brown young cow anywhere within
hearing; but in the covert of the viburnum, under
the densest shadow of the maple, crouched two
hunters, their eyes peering through the leafage with
the keen glitter of those of a beast of prey in
ambush. One of these hunters was a mere boy, clad
in blue-gray homespuns, lank and sprawling of
limb, the whitish down just beginning to acquire
texture and definiteness on his ruddy but hawk-
like face. He was on his first moose-hunt, eager
for a trophy, and ambitious to learn moose-calling.
The other was a raw-boned and grizzled woodsman,
still-eyed, swarthy-faced, and affecting the Indian
H Ureason ot IRature 193
fashion of a buckskin jacket. He was a hunter
whose fame went wide in the settlement. He
could master and slay the cunning kindred of the
wild by a craft finer than their own. He knew
all their weaknesses, and played upon them to their
destruction as he would. In one hairy hand he
held a long, trumpet-like roll of birch-bark. This
he would set to his lips at intervals, and utter
through it his deadly perfect mimicry of the call
of the cow-moose in rutting season. Each time
he did so, there came straightway in response the
ever-nearing bellow of the great bull hurrying
exultantly to the tryst. Each time he did so, too,
the boy crouching beside him turned upon him
a look of marvelling awe, the look of the rapt
neophyte. This tribute the old woodsman took
as his bare due, and paid it no attention whatever.
While yet the approaching bull was apparently
so far off that even eyes so keen as his had no
chance of discovering the ambush, the younger
hunter, unused to so long a stillness, got up to
stretch his cramped legs. As he stood forth into
the moonlight, a loon far out in the silver sheen
of the lake descried him, and at once broke into a
peal of his startling and demoniacal laughter.
" Git down ! " ordered the old woodsman, curtly.
^4 Ube IRfufcrefc of tbe
"That bird tells all it sees!" And immediately
setting the birchen trumpet to his lips, he sounded
the most seductive call he knew. It was answered
promptly, and this time from so near at hand that
the nerves of both hunters were strung to instant
tension. They both effaced themselves to a still-
ness and invisibility not excelled by that of the
most secret of the furtive folk. In this stillness
the boy, who was himself, by nature and affinity,
of the woodland kin, caught for the first time that
subtle, rhythmic hr-r-r-r-r-ing of the forest pulse;
but he took it for merely the rushing of the blood
in his too attentive ears.
Presently this sound was forgotten. He heard
a great portentous crashing in the underbrush.
Nearer, nearer it came; and both men drew them-
selves together, as if to meet a shock. Their
eyes met for one instant, and the look spoke aston-
ished realisation of the giant approaching bulk.
Then the old hunter called once more. The an-
swer, resonant and vast, but almost shrill with the
ecstasy of passion, blared forth from a dense fir
thicket immediately beyond the moonlit open. The
mighty crashing came up, as it seemed, to the
very edge of the glade, and there stopped abruptly.
No towering flight of antlers emerged into the
light.
H treason of nature 195
The boy's rifle for it was his shot was at
his shoulder; but he lowered it, and anxiously his
eyes sought the face of his companion. The latter,
with lips that made no sound, shaped the words,
" He suspects something." Then, once more lift-
ing the treacherous tube of birch-bark to his mouth,
he murmured through it a rough but strangely
tender note. It was not utterly unlike that with
which a cow sometimes speaks to her calf just after
giving birth to it, but more nasal and vibrant;
and it was full of caressing expectancy, and desire,
and question, and half-reproach. All the yearning
of all the mating ardour that has triumphed over
insatiable death, and kept the wilderness peopled
from the first, was in that deceitful voice. As
he ceased the call he raised himself stealthily behind
the thick trunk of the maple, lifted a wooden
bucket of water to the height of his shoulder, and
poured out a stream, which fell with noisy splashing
on the gravel.
The eager moose could not resist the appeal.
His vague suspicions fled. He burst forth into the
open, his eyes full and bright, his giant head
proudly uplifted.
The boy's large-calibre rifle spoke at that instant,
with a bitter, clapping report, and a shoot of red
196 TCbe fttnfcreo of tbe
flame through the viburnum screen. The tall
moose neither saw nor heard it. The leaden death
had crashed through his brain even before his
quick sense had time to note the menace. Swerving
a little at the shock, the huge body sank forward
upon the knees and muzzle, then rolled over upon
its side. There he lay unstirring, betrayed by
nature in the hour of his anticipation.
With a sudden outburst of voices, the two
hunters sprang up, broke from their ambush, and
ran to view the prize. They were no longer of the
secretive kindred of the wilderness, but pleased
children. The old woodsman eyed shrewdly the
inimitable spread of the prostrate antlers. As for
the boy, he stared at his victim, breathless, his eyes
a-glitter with the fierce elemental pride of the hunter
triumphant.
Haunter of tbe pine (Bloom
OR a moment the Boy felt afraid
afraid in his own woods. He felt that
he was being followed, that there were
hostile eyes burning into the back of his jacket.
The sensation was novel to him, as well as unpleas-
ant, and he resented it. He knew it -was all non-
sense. There was nothing in these woods bigger
than a weasel, he was sure of that. Angry at him-
self, he would not look round, but swung along care-
lessly through the thicket, being in haste because
it was already late and the cows should have been
home and milked before sundown. Suddenly,
however, he remembered that it was going flat
against all woodcraft to disregard a warning. And
was he not, indeed, deliberately seeking to culti-
vate and sharpen his instincts, in the effort to get
closer to the wild woods folk and know them in their
furtive lives? Moreover, he was certainly getting
more and more afraid! He stopped, and peered
into the pine glooms which surrounded him.
199
200 Ube IKtnfcret) ot tbe
Standing motionless as a stump, and breathing
with perfect soundlessness, he strained his ears to
help his eyes in their questioning of this obscure
menace. He could see nothing. He could hear
nothing. Yet he knew his eyes and ears were cun-
ning to pierce all the wilderness disguises. But
stay was that a deeper shadow, merely, far
among the pine trunks ? And did it move ? He
stole forward; but even as he did so, whatever of
unusual he saw or fancied in the object upon which
his eyes were fixed, melted away. It became but
a shadow among other shadows, and motionless as
they all motionless in the calm of the tranquil
sunset. He ran forward now, impatient to satisfy
himself beyond suspicion. Yes of course it
was just this gray spruce stump! He turned away,
a little puzzled and annoyed in spite of himself.
Thrashing noisily hither and thither through the
underbrush, quite contrary to his wonted quie-
tude while in the domains of the wood folk, and
calling loudly in his clear young voice, " Co-petty !
Co-petty ! Co-petty ! Co-o-o-petty ! " over and over,
he at length found the wilful young cow which had
been eluding him. Then he drove the herd slowly
homeward, with mellow tink-a-tonk, tank-tonk of
the cow-bells, to the farmyard and the milking.
Haunter ot tbe pine (Bloom 201
Several evenings later, when his search for the
wilful young cow chanced to lead him again through
the corner of this second growth pine wood, the
Boy had a repetition of the disturbing experience.
This time his response was instant and aggressive.
As soon as he felt that sensation of unfriendly eyes
pursuing him, he turned, swept the shadows with
his piercing scrutiny, plunged into the thickets with
a rush, then stopped short as if frozen, almost hold-
ing his breath in the tensity of his stillness. By this
procedure he hoped to catch the unknown haunter
of the glooms under the disadvantage of motion.
But again he was baffled. Neither eye nor ear re-
vealed him anything. He went home troubled and
wondering.
Some evenings afterward the same thing hap-
pened at another corner of the pasture; and again
one morning when he was fishing in the brook a
mile back into the woods, where it ran through a
tangled growth of birch and fir. He began to feel
that he was either the object of a malicious scrutiny,
or that he was going back to those baby days when
he used to be afraid of the dark. Being just at
the age of ripe boyhood when childishness in him-
self would seem least endurable, the latter supposi-
tion was not to be considered. He therefore set
aoa Ube lUnoreo of tbe
himself to investigate the mystery, and to pit his
woodcraft against the evasiveness of this troubler
of his peace.
The Boy's confidence in his woodcraft was well
founded. His natural aptitude for the study of
the wild kindred had been cultivated to the utmost
of his opportunity, in all the time that could be
stolen from his lesson-hours and from his unexacting
duties about his father's place. Impatient and
boyish in other matters, he had trained himself to
the patience of an Indian in regard to all matters
appertaining to the wood folk. He had a pet theory
that the human animal was more competent, as a
mere animal, than it gets the credit of being; and
it was his particular pride to outdo the wild crea-
tures at their own games. He could hide, unstirring
as a hidden grouse. He could run down a deer by
sheer endurance only to spare it at the last and
let it go, observed and mastered, but unhurt.
And he could see, as few indeed among the wild
things could. This was his peculiar triumph. His
eyes could discriminate where theirs could not.
Perfect movelessness was apt to deceive the keenest
of them; but his sight was not to be so foiled. He
could differentiate gradually the shape of the
brown hare crouching motionless on its brown
"THE BIG BEAST LITTLE IMAGINED HIMSELF OBSERVED."
Ubc Haunter of tbe flMne Oloom 905
form ; and separate the yellow weasel from the tuft
of yellow weeds; and distinguish the slumbering
night-hawk from the knot on the hemlock limb.
He could hear, too, as well as most of the wild kin-
dred, and better, indeed, than some; but in this
he had to acknowledge himself hopelessly out-
classed by not a few. He knew that the wood-
mouse and the hare, for instance, would simply
make a mock of him in any test of ears ; and as for
the owl well, that gifted hearer of infinitesimal
sounds would be justified in calling him stone-deaf.
The Boy was a good shot, but very seldom was
it that he cared to display his skill in that direction.
It was his ambition to " name all the birds without
a gun." He would know the wild folk living, not
dead. From the feebler of the wild folk he wanted
trust, not fear; and he himself had no fear, on
the other hand, of the undisputed Master of the
Woods, the big black bear. His faith, justified by
experience, was that the bear had sense, knew how
to mind his own business, and was ready to let
other people mind theirs. He knew the bear well,
from patient, secret observation when the big beast
little imagined himself observed. From the neigh-
bourhood of a bull-moose in rutting season he
would have taken pains to absent himself; and
206 Ube Iktnoreo of tbe WtU>
if he had ever come across any trace of a panther
in those regions, he would have studied that un-
certain beast with his rifle always at hand in case
of need. For the rest, he felt safe in the woods,
as an initiate of their secrets, and it was unusual
for him to carry in his wanderings any weapon
but a stout stick and the sheath-knife in his belt.
Now, however, when he set himself to discover
what it was that haunted his footsteps in the gloom,
he took his little rifle and in this act betrayed to
himself more uneasiness than he had been willing
to acknowledge.
This especial afternoon he got the hired man
to look after the cows for him, and betook himself
early, about two hours before sundown, to the
young pine wood where the mystery had begun. In
the heart of a little thicket, where he was partly
concealed and where the gray-brown of his clothes
blended with the stems and dead branches, he seated
himself comfortably with his back against a
stump. Experience had taught him that, in order
to hold himself long in one position, the position
chosen must be an easy one. Soon his muscles
relaxed, and all his senses rested, watchful but
unstrained. He had learned that tensity was a
thing to be held in reserve until occasion should
call for it.
" A GREAT LYNX LANDED OX THE LOG."
Haunter of tbc pine Gloom 209
In a little while his presence was ignored or for-
gotten by the chipmunks, the chickadees, the white-
throats, and other unafraid creatures. Once a chip-
munk, on weighty business bent, ran over his legs
rather than go around so unoffending an obstacle.
The chickadees played antics on the branches, and
the air was beaded sweetly everywhere with their
familiar sic-a-dee, dee-ee. A white-throat in the
tree right over his head whistled his mellow dear,
dear ee die dee ee die dee ee die dee, over and over.
But there was nothing new in all this : and at length
he began to grow conscious of his position, and
desirous of changing it slightly.
Before he had quite made up his mind to this
momentous step there came upon his ear a beating
of wings, and a fine cock grouse alighted on a log
some forty paces distant. He stretched himself,
strutted, spread his ruff and wings and tail, and
was about to begin drumming. But before the first
sonorous note rolled out there was a rustle and a
pounce. The beautiful bird bounded into the air
as if hurled from a spring; and a great lynx landed
on the log, digging his claws fiercely into the spot
where the grouse had stood. As the bird rocketed
off through the trees the lynx glared after him, and
emitted a loud, screeching snarl of rage. His dis-
a io Ubc Irtnoreo of tbe
appointment was so obvious and childish that the
Boy almost laughed out.
" Lucifee," said he to himself, giving it the name
it went by in all the back settlements. " That's the
fellow that has been haunting me. I didn't think
there were any lynxes this side of the mountain.
He hasn't seen me, that's sure. So now it's my
turn to haunt him a bit."
The lucifee, indeed, had for the moment thrown
off all concealment, in his fury at the grouse's es-
cape. His stub of a tail twitched and his pale
bright eyes looked around for something on which
to vent his feelings. Suddenly, however, a wander-
ing puff of air blew the scent of the Boy to his
nostrils. On the instant, like the soundless melting
of a shadow, he was down behind the log, taking
observations through the veil of a leafy branch.
Though the animal was looking straight toward
him, the Boy felt sure he was not seen. The eyes,
indeed, were but following the nose. The lynx's
nose is not so keen and accurate in its information
as are the noses of most of the other wild folk,
and the animal was puzzled. The scent was very
familiar to him, for had he not been investigating
the owner of it for over a week, following him at
every opportunity with mingled curiosity and
ZIbe Hiaunter of tbe pine (Bloom *n
hatred? Now, judging by the scent, the object
of his curiosity was close at hand yet incompre-
hensibly invisible. After sniffing and peering for
some minutes he came out from behind the log and
crept forward, moving like a shadow, and following
up the scent. From bush to tree-trunk, from thicket
to stump, he glided with incredible smoothness and
rapidity, elusive to the eye, utterly inaudible; and
behind each shelter he crouched to again take
observations. The Boy thought of him, now, as
a sort of malevolent ghost in fur, and no longer
wondered that he had failed to catch a glimpse of
him before.
The lynx (this was the first of its tribe the Boy
had ever seen, but he knew the kind by reputation)
was a somewhat doggish-looking cat, perhaps four
or five times the weight of an ordinary Tom, and
with a very uncatlike length of leg in proportion
to its length of body. Its hindquarters were dis-
proportionately high, its tail ridiculously short.
Spiky tufts to its ears and a peculiar brushing back
of the fur beneath its chin gave its round and fierce-
eyed countenance an expression at once savage and
grotesque. Most grotesque of all were the huge,
noiseless pads of its feet, muffled in fur. Its colour
was a tawny, weather-beaten gray-brown; its eyes
pale, round, brilliant, and coldly cruel.
212 Ube Ikfnoreo of tbe
At length the animal, on a stronger puff of air,
located the scent more closely. This was obvious
from a sudden stiffening of his muscles. His eyes
began to discern a peculiarity in the pine trunk
some twenty paces ahead. Surely that was no ordi-
nary pine trunk, that! No, indeed, that was where
the scent of the Boy came from and the hair
on his back bristled fiercely. In fact, it was the
Boy! The lucifee's first impulse, on the discovery,
was to shrink off like a mist, and leave further
investigation to a more favourable opportunity.
But he thought better of it because the Boy was so
still. Could he be asleep? Or, perhaps, dead? At
any rate, it would seem, he was for the moment
harmless. Curiosity overcoming discretion, and
possibly hatred suggesting a chance of advanta-
geous attack, the animal lay down, his paws folded
under him, contemplatively, and studied with round,
fierce eyes the passive figure beneath the tree.
The Boy, meanwhile, returned the stare with like
interest, but through narrowed lids, lest his eyes
should betray him; and his heart beat fast with
the excitement of the situation. There was a most
thrilling uncertainty, indeed, as to what the animal
would do next. He was glad he had brought his
rifle.
" PRESENTLY THE LUCIFEE AROSE AND BEGAN CREEPING
STEALTHILY CLOSER."
TTbe SHaunter of tbe pine 6loom 215
Presently the lucifee arose and began creeping
stealthily closer, at the same time swerving off to
the right as if to get behind the tree. Whether his
purpose in this was to escape unseen or to attack
from the rear, the Boy could not decide; but what
he did decide was that the game was becoming
hazardous and should be brought to immediate
close. He did not want to be compelled to shoot
the beast in self-defence, for, this being the first
lynx he had ever seen, he wanted to study him. So,
suddenly, with the least possible movement of his
features, he squeaked like a wood-mouse, then quit-
quit-^ like a grouse, then gave to a nicety the
sonorous call of the great horned owl.
The astonished lynx seemed to shrink into him-
self, as he flattened against the ground, grown
moveless as a stone. It was incredible, appalling
indeed, that these familiar and well-understood
voices should all come from that same impassive
figure. He crouched unstirring for so long that
at last the shadows began to deepen perceptibly.
The Boy remembered that he had heard, some time
ago, the bells of the returning cows ; and he realised
that it might not be well to give his adversary the
advantage of the dark. Nevertheless, the experi-
ence was one of absorbing interest and he hated
to close it.
216 Ube lttnfcre& of tbc
At length the lucifee came to the conclusion that
the mystery should be probed more fully. Once
more he rose upon his padded, soundless paws, and
edged around stealthily to get behind the tree. This
was not to be permitted. The Boy burst into a peal
of laughter and rose slowly to his feet. On the
instant the lucifee gave a bound, like a great rubber
ball, backward into a thicket. It seemed as if his
big feet were all feathers, and as if every tree
trunk bent to intervene and screen his going. The
Boy rubbed his eyes, bewildered at so complete and
instantaneous an exit. Grasping his rifle in readi-
ness, he hurried forward, searching every thicket,
looking behind every stump and trunk. The
haunter of the gloom had disappeared.
After this, however, the Boy was no more troub-
led by the mysterious pursuit. The lynx had evi-
dently found out all he required to know about him.
On the other hand the Boy was balked in his pur-
pose of finding out all he wanted to know about
the lynx. That wary animal eluded all his most
patient and ingenious lyings-in-wait, until the Boy
began to feel that his woodcraft was being turned
to a derision. Only once more that autumn did
he catch a glimpse of his shy opponent, and then
by chance, when he was on another trail. Hidden
"A SILENT GRAY THUNDERBOLT FELL UPON HIM."
TEbe Haunter of tbe Ipine (Bloom 219
at the top of a thick-wooded bank he was watching
a mink at its fishing in the brook below. But as
it turned out, the dark little fisherman had another
watcher as well. The pool in the brook was full
of large suckers. The mink had just brought one
to land in his triangular jaws and was proceeding
to devour it, when a silent gray thunderbolt fell
upon him. There was a squeak and a snarl; and
the long, snaky body of the mink lay as still as
that of the fish which had been its prey. Crouching
over his double booty, a paw on each, the lynx
glared about him in exultant pride. The scent of
the Boy, high on the bank above, did not come to
him. The fish, as the more highly prized tidbit,
he devoured at once. Then, after licking his lips
and polishing his whiskers, he went loping off
through the woods with the limp body of the mink
hanging from his jaws, to eat it at leisure in his lair.
The Boy made up his mind to find out where that
lair was hidden. But his searchings were all
vain, and he tried to console himself with the
theory that the animal was wont to travel great
distances in his hunting a theory which he knew
in his heart to be contrary to the customs of the
cat-kindred.
During the winter he was continually tantalised
ot tbe
by coming across the lucifee's tracks great foot-
prints, big enough to do for the trail-signature of
the panther himself. If he followed these tracks
far he was sure to find interesting records of wilder-
ness adventure here a spot where the lynx had
sprung upon a grouse, and missed it, or upon a hare,
and caught it; and once he found the place where
the big furry paws had dug down to the secret
white retreat where a grouse lay sleeping under the
snow. But by and by the tracks would cross each
other, and make wide circles, or end in a tree where
there was no lucifee to be found. And the Boy
was too busy at home to give the time which he
saw it would require to unravel the maze to its
end. But he refused to consider himself defeated.
He merely regarded his triumph as postponed.
Early in the spring the triumph came though
not just the triumph he had expected. Before the
snow was quite gone, and when the sap was begin-
ning to flow from the sugar maples, he went with
the hired man to tap a grove of extra fine trees
some five miles east from the settlement. Among
the trees they had a sugar camp; and when not
at the sugar-making, the Boy explored a near-by
burnt-land ridge, very rocky and rich in coverts,
where he had often thought the old lynx, his adver-
sary, might have made his lair. Here, the second
day after his arrival, he came upon a lucifee track.
But it was not the track with which he was familiar.
It was smaller, and the print of the right forefoot
lacked a toe.
The Boy grinned happily and rubbed his mit-
tened hands. " Aha ! " said he to himself, " better
and better! There is a Mrs. Lucifee. Now we'll
see where she hides her kittens."
The trail was an easy one this time, for no
enemies had been looked for in that desert neigh-
bourhood. He followed it for about half a mile,
and then caught sight of a hollow under an over-
hanging rock, to which the tracks seemed to lead.
Working around to get the wind in his face, he
stole cautiously nearer, till he saw that the hollow
was indeed the entrance to a cave, and that the
tracks led directly into it. He had no desire to
investigate further, with the risk of finding the
lucifee at home ; and it was getting too late for him
to undertake his usual watching tactics. He with-
drew stealthily and returned to the camp in
exultation.
In the night a thaw set in, so the Boy was spared
the necessity of waiting for the noon sun to soften
the snow and make the walking noiseless. He set
322 abe fUnfcrefc of tbe TWUlfc
out on the very edge of sunrise, and reached his
hiding-place while the mouth of the cave was still
in shadow. On the usual crisp mornings of sugar
season the snow at such an hour would have borne
a crust, to crackle sharply under every footstep
and proclaim an intruding presence to all the wood
folk for a quarter of a mile about.
After waiting for a good half-hour, his eyes
glued to a small black opening under the rock, his
heart gave a leap of strong, joyous excitement. He
saw the lucifee's head appear in the doorway. She
peered about her cautiously, little dreaming, how-
ever, that there was any cause for caution. Then
she came forth into the blue morning light, yawned
hugely, and stretched herself like a cat. She was
smaller than the Boy's old adversary, somewhat
browner in hue, leaner, and of a peculiarly malig-
nant expression. The Boy had an instant intuition
that she would be the more dangerous antagonist
of the two; and a feeling of sharp hostility toward
her, such as he had never felt toward her mate,
arose in his heart.
When she had stretched to her satisfaction, and
washed her face perfunctorily with two or three
sweeps of her big paw, she went back into the cave.
In two or three minutes she reappeared, and this
" YAWNED HUGELY, AND STRETCHED HERSELF LIKE A CAT."
Haunter of tbc pine (Bloom s
time with a brisk air of purpose. She turned to
the right, along a well-worn trail, ran up a tree
to take a survey of the country, descended hastily,
and glided away among the thickets.
" It's breakfast she's after," said the Boy to him-
self, " and she'll take some time to find it."
When she had been some ten minutes gone, the
Boy went boldly down to the cave. He had no
fear of encountering the male, because he knew
from an old hunter who had taught him his first
wood-lore that the male lucifee is not popular with
his mate at whelping time, having a truly Saturnian
fashion of devouring his own offspring. But there
was the possibility, remote, indeed, but disquieting,
of the mother turning back to see to some neglected
duty; and with this chance in view he held his
rifle ready.
Inside the cave he stood still and waited for his
eyes to get used to the gloom. Then he discovered,
in one corner, on a nest of fur and dry grass, a
litter of five lucifee whelps. They were evidently
very young, little larger than ordinary kittens, and
too young to know fear, but their eyes were wide
open, and they stood up on strong legs when he
touched them softly with his palm. Disappointed
in their expectation of being nursed, they mewed,
226 Ube Rtnfcret) of tbe 1QHI&
and there was something in their cries that sounded
strangely wild and fierce. To the Boy's great sur-
prise, they were quite different in colour from their
gray-brown, unmarked parents, being striped
vividly and profusely, like a tabby or tiger. The
Boy was delighted with them, and made up his
mind that when they were a few days older he
would take two of them home with him to be
brought up in the ways of civilisation.
Three days later he again visited the den, this-,
time with a basket in which to carry away his
prizes. After waiting an hour to see if the mother
were anywhere about, he grew impatient. Stealing
as close to the cave's mouth as the covert would
permit, he squeaked like a wood-mouse several
times. This seductive sound bringing no response,
he concluded that the old lucifee must be absent.
He went up to the mouth of the cave and peered
in, holding his rifle in front of his face in readiness
for an instant shot. When his eyes got command
of the dusk, he saw to his surprise that the den was
empty. He entered and felt the vacant nest. It
was quite cold, and had a deserted air. Then he
realised what had happened, and cursed his clumsi-
ness. The old lucifee, when she came back to her
den, had learned by means of her nose that her
Haunter of tbe pine (Bloom 227
enemy had discovered her hiding-place and touched
her young with his defiling human hands, there-
upon in wrath she had carried them away to some
remote and unviolated lair. Till they were grown
to nearly the full stature of lucifee destructiveness,
the Boy saw no more of his wonderful lucifee
kittens.
Toward the latter part of the summer, however,
he began to think that perhaps he had made a mis-
take in leaving these fierce beasts to multiply. He
no longer succeeded in catching sight of them as
they went about their furtive business, for they had
somehow become aware of his woodcraft and dis-
trustful of their own shifts. But on all sides he
found trace of their depredations among the weaker
creatures. He observed that the rabbits were
growing scarce about the settlement; and even the
grouse were less numerous in the upland thickets
of young birch. As all the harmless wood folk
were his friends, he began to feel that he had been
false to them in sparing their enemies. Thereupon,
he took to carrying his rifle whenever he went
exploring. He had not really declared war upon
the haunters of the glooms, but his relations with
them were becoming distinctly strained.
At length the rupture came; and it was violent.
228 Ube 1kfn&re& ot tbe
In one of the upland pastures, far back from the
settlement, he came upon the torn carcass of a
half-grown lamb. He knew that this was no work
of a bear, for the berries were abundant that au-
tumn, and the bear prefers berries to mutton.
Moreover, when a bear kills a sheep he skins it
deftly and has the politeness to leave the pelt rolled
up in a neat bundle, just to indicate to the farmer
that he has been robbed by a gentleman. But this
carcass was torn and mangled most untidily; and
the Boy divined the culprits.
It was early in the afternoon when he made his
find, and he concluded that the lucifees were likely
to return to their prey before evening. He hid
himself, therefore, behind a log thickly fringed with
juniper, not twenty-five paces from the carcass; and
waited, rifle in hand.
A little before sunset appeared the five young
lucifees, now nearly full grown. They fell at once
to tearing at the carcass, with much jealous snarling
and fighting. Soon afterwards came the mother,
with a well-fed, leisurely air; and at her heels,
the big male of the Boy's first acquaintance. It was
evident that, now that the rabbits were getting
scarce, the lucifees were hunting in packs, a custom
very unusual with these unsocial beasts under ordi-
' MOUNTED THE CARCASS WITH AN AIR OF LORDSHIP."
Ube Haunter of tbe jpine Gloom 231
nary circumstances, and only adopted when seek-
ing big game. The big male cuffed the cubs aside
without ceremony, mounted the carcass with an
air of lordship, glared about him, and suddenly,
with a snarl of wrath, fixed his eyes upon the green
branches wherein the Boy lay concealed. At the
same time the female, who had stopped short, snif-
fing and peering suspiciously, crouched to her belly,
and began to crawl very softly and stealthily, as
a cat crawls upon an unsuspecting bird, toward the
innocent-looking juniper thicket.
The Boy realised that he had presumed too far
upon the efficacy of stillness, and that the lynxes,
at this close range, had detected him. He realised,
too, that now, jealous in the possession of their
prey, they had somehow laid aside their wonted
fear of him; and he congratulated himself heartily
that his little rifle was a repeater. Softly he raised
it to take aim at the nearest, and to him the most
dangerous of his foes, the cruel-eyed female; but
in doing so he stirred, ever so little, the veiling
fringe of juniper. At the motion the big male
sprang forward, with two great bounds, and
crouched within ten yards of the log. His stub of
a tail twitched savagely. He was plainly nerving
himself to the attack.
232 TTbe Tkinfcrefc ot tbe TOlfc
There was no time to lose. Taking quick but
careful aim, the Boy fired. The bullet found its
mark between the brute's eyes, and he straightened
out where he lay, without a kick. At the sound
and the flash the female doubled upon herself as
quick as light; and before the Boy could get a shot
at her she was behind a stump some rods away,
shrinking small, and fleeing like a gray shred of
vapour. The whelps, too, had vanished with almost
equal skill all but one. He, less alert and intelli-
gent than his fellows, tried concealment behind a
clump of pink fireweed. But the Boy's eyes pierced
the screen ; and the next bullet, cutting the fireweed
stalks, took vengeance for many slaughtered hares
and grouse.
After this the Boy saw no more of his enemies
for some months, but though they had grown still
more wary their experience had not made them
less audacious. Before the snow fell they had killed
another sheep; and the Boy was sure that they,
rather than any skunks or foxes, were to blame for
the disappearance of several geese from his flock.
His primeval hunting instincts were now aroused,
and he was no longer merely the tender-hearted
and sympathetic observer. It was only toward
the marauding lucifees, however, that his feelings
Ztbe Haunter of tbe pine (Bloom 233
had changed. The rest of the wild folk he loved
as well as before, but for the time he was too busy
to think of them.
When the snow came, and footsteps left their tell-
tale records, the Boy found to his surprise that he
had but one lucifee to deal with. Every lynx track
in the neighbourhood had a toe missing on the
right forefoot. It was clear that the whelps of
last spring had shirked the contest and betaken
themselves to other and safer hunting-grounds;
but he felt that between himself and the vindictive
old female it was war to the knife. Her tracks
fairly quartered the outlying fields all about his
father's farm, and were even to be found now and
again around the sheep-pen and the fowl-house.
Yet never, devise he ever so cunningly, did he get
a glimpse of so much as her gray stub tail.
At last, through an open window, she invaded
the sheep-pen by night and killed two young ewes.
To the Boy this seemed mere wantonness of cruelty,
and he set his mind to a vengeance which he had
hitherto been unwilling to consider. He resolved
to trap his enemy, since he could not shoot her.
Now, as a mere matter of woodcraft, he knew
all about trapping and snaring; but ever since the
day, now five years gone, when he had been heart-
234 Ube "Rinoreo of tbe TKI1U&
stricken by his first success in rabbit-snaring, he had
hated everything like a snare or trap. Now, how-
ever, in the interests of all the helpless creatures
of the neighbourhood, wild or tame, he made up his
mind to snare the lucifee. He went about it with
his utmost skill, in a fashion taught him by an
old Indian trapper.
Close beside one of his foe's remoter runways,
in an upland field where the hares were still abun-
dant, the Boy set his snare. It was just a greatly
exaggerated rabbit snare, of extra heavy wire and
a cord of triple strength. But instead of being
attached to the top of a bent-down sapling, it was
fastened to a billet of wood about four feet long
and nearly two inches in diameter. This sub-
stantial stick was supported on two forked uprights
driven into the snow beside the runway. Then
young fir-bushes were stuck about it carefully in
a way to conceal evidence of his handiwork ; and
an artful arrangement of twigs disguised the
ambushed loop of wire.
Just behind the loop of wire, and some inches
below it, the Boy arranged his bait. This consisted
of the head and skin of a hare, stuffed carefully
with straw, and posed in a lifelike attitude. It
seemed, indeed, to be comfortably sleeping on the
ttbe Haunter of tbe pine Gloom 235
snow, under the branches of a young fir-tree; and
the Boy felt confident that the tempting sight
would prevent the wily old lucifee from taking any
thought to the surroundings before securing the
prize.
Late that afternoon, when rose and gold were
in the sky, and the snowy open spaces were of a
fainter rose, and the shadows took on an ashy
purple under the edges of the pines and firs, the
old lucifee came drifting along like a phantom.
She peered hungrily under every bush, hoping to
catch some careless hare asleep. On a sudden a
greenish fire flamed into her wide eyes. She
crouched, and moved even more stealthily than
was her wont. The snow, the trees, the still, sweet
evening light, seemed to invest her with silence.
Very soundly it slept, that doomed hare, crouching
under the fir-bush! And now, she was within
reach of her spring. She shot forward, straight
and strong and true.
Her great paws covered the prey, indeed; but
at the same instant a sharp, firm grip clutched her
throat with a jerk, and then something hit her
a sharp rap over the shoulders. With a wild leap
backward and aside she sought to evade the mys-
terious attack. But the noose settled firmly behind
236 Ube frtntoefc of tbe TKHU&
her ears, and the billet of wood, with a nasty tug
at her throat, leapt after her.
So this paltry thing was her assailant ! She flew
into a wild rage at the stick, tearing at it with her
teeth and claws. But this made no difference
with the grip about her throat, so she backed off
again. The stick followed and the grip tight-
ened. Bracing her forepaws upon the wood she
pulled fiercely to free herself; and the wire drew
taut till her throat was almost closed. Her rage
had hastened her doom, fixing the noose where
there was no such thing as clawing it off. Then
fear took the place of rage in her savage heart.
Her lungs seemed bursting. She began to realise
that it was not the stick, but some more potent
enemy whom she must circumvent or overcome.
She picked up the billet between her jaws, climbed
a big birch-tree which grew close by, ran out upon
a limb some twenty feet from the ground, and
dropped the stick, thinking thus to rid herself of
the throttling burden.
The shock, as the billet reached the end of its
drop, jerked her from her perch; but clutching
frantically she gained a foothold on another limb
eight or ten feet lower down. There she clung,
her tongue out, her eyes filming, her breath stopped,
ffiaunter of tbe jpine (Bloom 237
strange colours of flame and darkness rioting in
her brain. Bracing herself with all her remaining
strength against the pull of the dangling stick, she
got one paw firmly fixed against a small jutting
branch. Thus it happened that when, a minute
later, her life went out and she fell, she fell on
the other side of the limb. The billet of wood
flew up, caught in a fork, and held fast; and the
limp, tawny body, twitching for a minute convul-
sively, hung some six or seven feet above its own
tracks in the snow.
An hour or two later the moon rose, silvering the
open spaces. Then, one by one and two by two,
the hares came leaping down the aisles of pine
and fir. Hither and thither around the great birch-
tree they played, every now and then stopping to
sit up and thump challenges to their rivals. And
because it was quite still, they never saw the body
of their deadliest foe, hanging stark from the branch
above them.
Gbe Matcbers of tbe <amp*]ftre
'OR five years the big panther, who ruled
the ragged plateau around the head
waters of the Upsalquitch, had been
well content with his hunting-ground. This win-
ter, however, it had failed him. His tawny sides
were lank with hunger. Rabbits and none too
many of them were but thin and spiritless meat
for such fiery blood as his. His mighty and rest-
less muscles consumed too swiftly the unsatisfy-
ing food ; and he was compelled to hunt continually,
foregoing the long, recuperative sleeps which the
tense springs of his organism required. Every
fibre in his body was hungering for a full meal
of red-blooded meat, the sustaining flesh of deer
or caribou. The deer, of course, he did not ex-
pect on these high plains and rough hills of the
Upsalquitch. They loved the well-wooded ridges
of the sheltered, low-lying lands. But the caribou
for five years their wandering herds had
thronged these plains, where the mosses they loved
242 Ube frtnoreo of tbe
grew luxuriantly. And now, without warning or
excuse, they had vanished.
The big panther knew the caribou. He knew
that, with no reason other than their own caprice,
the restless gray herds would drift away, forsaking
the most congenial pastures, journey swiftly and
eagerly league upon inconsequent league, and at
last rest seemingly content with more perilous
ranges and scanter forage, in a region remote and
new.
He was an old beast, ripe in the craft of the
hunt; and the caribou had done just what he knew
in his heart they were likely to do. Nevertheless,
because the head waters of the Upsalquitch were
much to his liking, the best hunting-ground,
indeed, that he had ever found, he had hoped
for a miracle; he had grown to expect that these
caribou would stay where they were well off.
Their herds had thriven and increased during the
five years of his guardianship. He had killed only
for his needs, never for the lust of killing. He
had kept all four-foot poachers far from his pre-
serves; and no hunters cared to push their way
to the inaccessible Upsalquitch while game was
abundant on the Tobique and the Miramichi. He
knew all these wilderness waters of northern New
Ube TKHatcbers of tbe Campsite 245
Brunswick, having been born not far from the
sources of the Nashwaak, and worked his way
northward as soon as he was full-grown, to escape
the hated neighbourhood of the settlements. He
knew that his vanished caribou would find no
other pastures so rich and safe as these which they
had left. Nevertheless, they had left them. And
now, after a month of rabbit meat, he would for-
sake them, too. He would move down westward,
and either come upon the trail of his lost herds, or
push over nearer to the St. John valley and find
a country of deer.
The big panther was no lover of long journey-
ings, and he did not travel with the air of one
bent on going far. He lingered much to hunt
rabbits on the way; and wherever he found a lair
to his liking he settled himself as if for a long
sojourn. Nevertheless he had no idea of halting
until he should reach a land of deer or caribou, and
his steady drift to westward carried him far in
the course of a week. The snow, though deep,
was well packed by a succession of driving winds,
and his big, spreading paws carried him over its
surface as if he had been shod with snow-shoes.
By the end of a week, however, the continuous
travelling on the unsubstantial diet of rabbit meat
246 be ftitrtret* ol tbe TKUto
had begun to tell upon him. He was hungry and
unsatisfied all the time, and his temper became
abominable. Now and then in the night he was
fortunate enough to surprise a red squirrel asleep
in its nest, or a grouse rooting in its thicket; but
these were mere atoms to his craving, and moreover
their flesh belonged to the same pale order as that of
his despised rabbits. When he came to a beaver
village, the rounded domes of the houses dotting
the snowy level of their pond, a faint steam of
warmth and moisture arising from their ventilating
holes like smoke, he sometimes so far forgot himself
as to waste a few minutes in futile clawing at the
roofs, though he knew well enough that several feet
of mud, frozen to the solidity of rock, protected
the savoury flat-tails from his appetite.
Once, in a deep, sheltered river-valley, where a
strong rapid and a narrow deep cascade kept open
a black pool of water all through the winter frost,
his luck and his wits working together gained him
a luncheon of fat porcupine. Tempted from its
den by the unwonted warmth of noonday, the
porcupine had crawled out upon a limb to observe
how the winter was passing, and to sniff for signs
of spring in the air. At the sight of the panther,
who had climbed the tree and cut off its retreat, it
ttbe Watchers of the Gamp-fftre 247
bristled its black and white quills, whirled about
on its branch, and eyed its foe with more anger
than terror, confident in its pointed spines.
The panther understood and respected that fine
array of needle-points, and ordinarily would have
gone his way hungry rather than risk the peril
of getting his paws and nose stuck full of those
barbed weapons. But just now his cunning was
very keenly on edge. He crawled within striking
distance of the porcupine, and reached out his
great paw, gingerly enough, to clutch the latter's
unprotected face. Instantly the porcupine rolled
itself into a bristling ball of needle-points and
dropped to the ground below.
The panther followed at a single bound; but
there was no need whatever of hurry. The porcu-
pine lay on the snow, safely coiled up within its
citadel of quills; and the panther lay down beside
it, waiting for it to unroll. But after half an hour
of this vain waiting, patience gave out and he
began experimenting. Extending his claws to the
utmost, so that the quill-points should not come in
contact with the fleshy pads of his foot, he softly
turned the porcupine over. Now it chanced that the
hard, glassy snow whereon it lay sloped toward the
open pool, and the bristling ball moved several feet
248 ttbe fdn&ret) of tbe
down the slope. The panther's pale eyes gleamed
with a sudden thought. He pushed the ball again,
very, very delicately. Again, and yet again ; till,
suddenly, reaching a spot where the slope was
steeper, it rolled of its own accord, and dropped
with a splash into the icy current.
As it came to the surface the porcupine straight-
ened itself out to swim for the opposite shore. But
like a flash the panther's paw scooped under it, and
the long keen claws caught it in the unshielded
belly. Unavailing now were those myriad bristling
spear-points; and when the panther continued his
journey he left behind him but a skin of quills
and some blood-stains on the snow, to tell the
envious lucifees that one had passed that way who
knew how to outwit the porcupine.
On the following day, about noon, he came across
an astonishing and incomprehensible trail, at the
first sight and scent of which the hair rose along
his backbone.
The scent of the strange trail he knew, and
hated it, and feared it. It was the man-scent. Bui
the shape and size of the tracks at first appalled
him. He had seen men, and the footprints of men;
but never men with feet so vast as these. The
trail was perhaps an hour old. He sniffed at it and
11 HE PUSHED THE BALL AGAIN, VERY, VERY DELICATELY.'
ttbe TKflatcbers of tbe Campsite 251
puzzled over it for a time; and then, perceiving
that the man-scent clung only in a little depression
about the centre of each track, concluded that the
man who had made the track was no bigger than
such men as he had seen. The rest of the trail
was a puzzle, indeed, but it presently ceased to
appal. Thereupon he changed his direction, and
followed the man's trail at a rapid pace. His cour-
age was not strung up to the pitch of resolving
to attack this most dangerous and most dreaded of
all creatures; but his hunger urged him insistently,
and he hoped for some lucky chance of catching
the man at a disadvantage. Moreover, it would
soon be night, and he knew that with darkness his
courage would increase, while that of the man
a creature who could not see well in the dark
should by all the laws of the wilderness diminish.
He licked his lean chops at the thought of what
would happen to the man unawares.
For some time he followed the trail at a sham-
bling lope, every now and then dropping into an
easy trot for the easement of the change. Occa-
sionally he would stop and lie down for a few
minutes at full length, to rest his overdriven lungs,
being short-winded after the fashion of his kind.
But when, toward sundown, when the shadows
252 ttbe fcinfcreo of tbe Milt)
began to lengthen and turn blue upon the snow, and
the western sky, through the spruce-tops, took upon
a bitter wintry orange dye, he noticed that the
trail was growing fresher. So strong did the man-
scent become that he expected every moment to
catch a glimpse of the man through the thicket.
Thereupon he grew very cautious. No longer would
he either lope or trot; but he crept forward, belly
to the ground, setting down each paw with delicacy
and precaution. He kept turning the yellow flame
of his eyes from side to side continually, searching
the undergrowth on every hand, and often looking
back along his own track. He knew that men
were sometimes inconceivably stupid, but at other
times cunning beyond all the craft of the wood folk.
He was not going to let himself become the hunted
instead of the hunter, caught in the old device of
the doubled trail.
At last, as twilight was gathering headway
among the thickets, he was startled by a succession
of sharp sounds just ahead of him. He stopped,
and crouched motionless in his tracks. But pres-
ently he recognised and understood the sharp
sounds, especially when they were followed by a
crackling and snapping of dry branches. They
were axe-strokes. He had heard them in the neigh-
TRUatcbers of tbe Gamp-jfire 253
bourhood of the lumber camps, before his five years'
retirement on the head waters of the Upsalquitch.
With comprehension came new courage, for the
wild folk put human wisdom to shame in their
judicious fear of what they do not understand. He
crept a little nearer, and from safe hiding watched
the man at his task of gathering dry firewood for
the night. From time to time the man looked about
him alertly, half suspiciously, as if he felt himself
watched; but he could not discover the pale, cruel
eyes that followed him unwinking from the depths
of the hemlock thicket.
In a few minutes the panther was surprised to
see the man take one of his heavy snow-shoes and
begin digging vigorously at the snow. In a little
while there was a circular hole dug so deep that
when the man stood up in it little more than his
head and shoulders appeared over the edge. Then
he carried in a portion of the wood which he had
cut, together with a big armful of spruce boughs;
and he busied himself for awhile at the bottom
of the hole, his head appearing now and then, but
only for a moment. The panther was filled with
curiosity, but restrained himself from drawing
nearer to investigate. Then, when it had grown
so dark that he was about to steal from his hiding
254 Ube Htnoreo of tbe Milt*
and creep closer, suddenly there was a flash of
light, and smoke and flame arose from the hole,
throwing a red, revealing glare on every covert;
and the panther, his lips twitching and his hair
rising, shrank closer into his retreat.
The smoke, and the scent of the burning sticks,
killed the scent of the man in the panther's nostrils.
But presently there was a new scent, warm, rich,
and appetising. The panther did not know it, but
he liked it. It was the smell of frying bacon.
Seeing that the man was much occupied over the
fire, the hungry beast made a partial circuit of the
camp-fire, and noiselessly climbed a tree whence
he could look down into the mysterious hole.
From this post of vantage he watched the man
make his meal, smoke his pipe, replenish the fire,
and finally, rolling himself in his heavy blanket,
compose himself to sleep. Then, little by little,
the panther crept nearer. He feared the fire; but
the fire soon began to die down, and he despised it
as he saw it fading. He crept out upon a massive
hemlock limb, almost overlooking the hole, but
screened by a veil of fine green branches. From
this post he could spring upon the sleeper at one
bound, as soon as he could make up his mind
to the audacious enterprise. He feared the man,
Ube Matcbers ot tbe Gamp*jfire 255
even asleep; in fact, he stood in strange awe of
the helpless, slumbering form. But little by little
he began to realise that he feared his own hunger
more. Lower and lower sank the fainting fire;
and he resolved that as soon as the sleeper should
stir in his sleep, beginning to awake, he would
spring. But the sleeper slept unstirring; and so
the panther, equally unstirring, watched.
n.
A little beyond the camp-fire where the man lay
sleeping under those sinister eyes, rose the slopes
of a wooded ridge. The ridge was covered with
a luxuriant second growth of birch, maple, Canada
fir, moose-wood, and white spruce, the ancient
forest having fallen years before under the axes of
the lumbermen. Here on the ridge, where the food
they loved was abundant, a buck, with his herd of
does and fawns, had established his winter " yard."
With their sharp, slim hoofs which cut deep into
the snow, if the deer were compelled to seek their
food at large they would find themselves at the
mercy of every foe as soon as the snow lay deep
enough to impede their running. It is their custom,
therefore, at the beginning of winter, to select a
locality where the food supply will not fail them,
256 tCbe fdufcrefc of tbe
and intersect the surface of the snow in every direc-
tion with an inextricable labyrinth of paths. These
paths are kept well trodden, whatever snow may
fall. If straightened out they would reach for
many a league. To unravel their intricacies is
a task to which only the memories of their makers
are equal, and along them the deer flee like wraiths
at any alarm. If close pressed by an enemy they
will leap, light as birds, from one deep path to
another, leaving no mark on the intervening barrier
of snow, and breaking the trail effectually. Thus
when the snow lies deep, the yard becomes their
spacious citadel, and the despair of pursuing lynx
or panther. A herd of deer well yarded, under the
leadership of an old and crafty buck, will come safe
and sleek through the fiercest wilderness winter.
The little herd which occupied this particular
yard chanced to be feeding, in the glimmer of the
winter twilight, very near the foot of the ridge,
when suddenly a faint red glow, stealing through
the branches, caught the old buck's eye. There was
a quick stamp of warning, and on the instant the
herd turned to statues, their faces all one way, their
sensitive ears, vibrating nostrils, and wide atten-
tive eyes all striving to interpret the prodigy. They
were a herd of the deep woods. Not one of them
Ube TKlatcbers of tbe Camp*3ffre 257
had ever been near the settlements. Not even the
wise old leader had ever seen a fire. This light,
when the sun had set and no moon held the sky,
was inexplicable.
But to the deer a mystery means something to
be solved. He has the perilous gift of curiosity.
After a few minutes of moveless watching, the whole
herd, in single file, began noiselessly threading the
lower windings of the maze, drawing nearer and
nearer to the strange light. When the first smell
of the burning came to their nostrils they stopped
again, but not for long. That smell was just
another mystery to be looked into. At the smell
of the frying pork they stopped again, this time
for a longer period and with symptoms of uneasi-
ness. To their delicate nerves there was something
of a menace in that forbidding odour. But even
so, it was to be investigated; and very soon they
resumed their wary advance.
A few moments more and they came to a spot
where, peering through a cover of spruce boughs,
their keen eyes could see the hole in the snow, the
camp-fire, and the man seated beside it smoking his
pipe. It was all very wonderful; but instinct told
them it was perilous, and the old buck decided that
the information they had acquired was sufficient
258 Ube 1Rint>reo of tbe THUUo
for all practical purposes of a deer's daily life. He
would go no nearer. The whole herd stood there
for a long time, forgetting to eat, absorbed in the
novelty and wonder of the scene.
The whole herd, did I say? There was one
exception. To a certain young doe that fire was
the most fascinating thing in life. It drew her.
It hypnotised her. After a few minutes of still-
ness she could resist no longer. She pushed past
the leader of the herd and stole noiselessly toward
the shining lovely thing. The old buck signalled
her back, first gently, then angrily ; but she had
grown forgetful of the laws of the herd. She
had but one thought, to get nearer to the camp-fire,
and drench her vision in the entrancing glow.
Nevertheless, for all her infatuation, she forgot
not her ancestral gift of prudence. She went noise-
lessly as a shadow, drifting, pausing, listening,
sniffing the air, concealing herself behind every
cover. The rest of the herd gazed after her with
great eyes of resignation, then left her to her way-
ward will and resumed their watching of the camp-
fire. When one member of a herd persists in
disobeying orders, the rest endure with equanimity
whatever fate may befall her.
Step by step, as if treading on egg-shells, the
"STOLE NOISELESSLY TOWARD THE SHINING LOVELY THING."
TKHatcbers of tbe Campsite 261
fascinated doe threaded the path till she came to
the lowest limit of the yard. From that point the
path swerved back up the ridge, forsaking the
ruddy glow. The doe paused, hesitating. She was
still too far from the object of her admiration and
wonder; but she feared the deep snow. Her
irresolution soon passed, however. Getting behind
a thick hemlock, she cautiously raised herself over
the barrier and made straight for the camp-fire.
Packed as the snow was, her light weight enabled
her to traverse it without actually floundering. She
sank deep at every step, but had perfect control
of her motions, and made no more sound than if
she had been a bunch of fur blown softly over the
surface. Her absorption and curiosity, moreover,
did not lead her to omit any proper precaution of
woodcraft. As she approached the fire she kept
always in the dense, confusing, shifting shadows
which a camp-fire casts in the forest. These fitful
shadows were a very effectual concealment.
At last she found herself so close to the fire that
only a thicket of young spruce divided her from
the edge of the hole.
Planting herself rigidly, her gray form an inde-
terminate shadow among the blotches and streaks
of shadow, her wide mild eyes watched the man
262 ube ftfnorefc of tbe TMIU&
with intensest interest, as he knocked out his pipe,
mended the fire, and rolled himself into his blanket
on the spruce boughs. When she saw that he was
asleep, she presently forgot about him. Her eyes
returned to the fire and fixed themselves upon it.
The veering, diminishing flames held her as by
sorcery. All else was forgotten, food, foes, and
the herd alike, as she stared with childlike
eagerness at the bed of red coals. The pupils of
her eyes kept alternately expanding and contracting,
as the glow in the coals waxed and waned under
the fluctuating breath of passing airs.
ni.
Very early that same morning, a brown and griz-
zled chopper in Nicholson's camp, having obtained
a brief leave of absence from the Boss, had started
out on his snow-shoes for a two days' tramp to
the settlements. He had been seized the night
before with a sudden and irresistible homesickness.
Shrewd, whimsical, humourous, kind, ever ready to
stand by a comrade, fearless in all the daunting
emergencies which so often confront the lumbermen
in their strenuous calling, these sudden attacks of
homesickness were his one and well-known failing
in the eyes of his fellows. At least once in every
TTbc THIlatcbers of tbe Campsite 263
winter he was sure to be so seized; and equally
sure to be so favoured by the Boss. On account of
his popularity in the camp, moreover, this favour
excited no jealousy. It had come to be taken as
a matter of course that Mac would go home for
a few days if one of his " spells " came upon him.
He was always " docked," to be sure, for the time
of his absence, but as he never stayed away more
than a week, his little holiday made no very serious
breach in his roll when pay-day, came.
Though not a hunter, the man was a thorough
woodsman. He knew the woods, and the furtive
inhabitants of them; and he loved to study their
ways. Trails, in particular, were a passion with
him, and he could read the varying purposes of
the wild things by the changes in their footprints
on the snow. He was learned, too, in the occult
ways of the otter, whom few indeed are cunning
enough to observe ; and he had even a rudimentary
knowledge of the complex vocabulary of the crow.
He had no care to kill the wild things, great or
small; yet he was a famous marksman, with his
keen gray eye and steady hand. And he always
carried a rifle on his long, solitary tramps.
He had two good reasons for carrying the rifle.
The first of these was the fact that he had never
264 Ube "Rfnoreo of tbe THfltlt)
seen a panther, and went always in the hope
of meeting one. The stories which he had heard
of them, current in all the lumber camps of northern
New Brunswick, were so conflicting that he could
not but feel uncertain as to the terms on which the
encounter was likely to take place. The only point
on which he felt assured was that he and the pan-
ther would some day meet, in spite of the fact
that the great cat had grown so scarce in New
Brunswick that some hunters declared it was ex-
tinct. The second reason was that he had a quarrel
with all lucifees or lynxes, " Injun devils," he
called them. Once when he was a baby, just big
enough to sit up when strapped into his chair, a
lucifee had come and glared at him with fierce eyes
through the doorway of his lonely backwoods cabin.
His mother had come rushing from the cow-shed,
just in time; and the lucifee, slinking off to the
woods, had vented his disappointment in a series of
soul-curdling screeches. The memory of this terror
was a scar in his heart, which time failed to efface.
He grew up to hate all lucifees ; and from the day
when he learned to handle a gun he was always
ready to hunt them.
On this particular day of his life he had travelled
all the morning without adventure, his face set
TKHatcbers ot tbe Campsite 265
eagerly toward the west. Along in the afternoon
he was once or twice surprised by a creeping sensa-
tion along his backbone and in the roots of the
hair on his neck. He stopped and peered about
him searchingly, with a feeling that he was fol-
lowed. But he had implicit faith in his eyesight;
and when that revealed no menace he went onward
reassured. .
But when the diversion of gathering firewood
and digging the hole that served him for a camp
came to an end, and he stooped to build his camp-
fire, that sensation of being watched came over
him again. It was so strong that he straightened
up sharply, and scrutinised every thicket within
eyeshot. Thereafter, though he could see nothing
to justify his curious uneasiness, the sensation kept
recurring insistently all the time that he was occu-
pied in cooking and eating his meal. When at last
he was ready to turn in for his brief night's sleep,
he planned to be afoot again before dawn,
he heaped his frugal camp-fire a little higher than
usual, and took the quite unwonted precaution of
laying his rifle within instant grasp of his hand.
In spite of these vague warnings, wherein his
instinct showed itself so much more sagacious than
his reason, he fell asleep at once. His wholesome
266 abe fUnfcrefc of tbe
drowsiness, in that clear and vital air, was not to
be denied. But once deep asleep, beyond the vacil-
lation of ordered thought and the obstinacies of
will, his sensitive intuitions reasserted themselves.
They insisted sharply on his giving heed to their
warnings; and all at once he found himself wide
awake with not a vestige of sleep's heaviness left
in his brain.
With his trained woodcraft, however, he knew
that it was some peril that had thus awakened him,
and he gave no sign of his waking. Without a
movement, without a change in his slow, deep
breathing, he half opened his eyes and scanned the
surrounding trees through narrowed lids.
Presently he caught a glimmer of big, soft,
round eyes gazing at him through a tangle of
spruce boughs. Were they gazing at him? No,
it was the fire that held their harmless attention.
He guessed the owner of those soft eyes; and in
a moment or two he was able to discern dimly
the lines of the deer's head and neck.
His first impulse was to laugh impatiently at his
own folly. Had he been enduring all these creepy
apprehensions because an inquisitive doe had fol-
lowed him ? Had his nerves grown so sensitive that
the staring of a chipmunk or a rabbit had power
Ube Matcbers of tbe Camp*jftre 267
to break his sleep ? But while these thoughts rushed
through his brain his body lay still as before, obedi-
ent to the subtle dictates of his instinct. His long
study of the wild things had taught him much of
their special wisdom. He swept his glance around
the dim-lit aisle as far as he could without per-
ceptibly turning his head and met the lambent
blue-green gaze of the watching panther!
Through the thin veil of the hemlock twigs, he
saw the body of the animal, gathered for the
spring, and realised with a pang that the long
expected had not arrived in just the form he would
have chosen. He knew better than to reach for
his rifle, because he knew that the least move-
ment of head or hand would be the signal for the
launching of that fatal leap. There was nothing
to do but wait, and keep motionless, and think.
The strain of that waiting was unspeakable, and
under it the minutes seemed hours. But just as
he was beginning to think he could stand it no
longer, a brand in the fire burned through and broke
smartly. Flames leapt up, with a shower of sparks,
and the panther, somewhat startled, drew back
and shifted his gaze. It was but for an instant,
but in that instant the man had laid hold of his rifle,
drawn it to him, and got it into a position where
268 ube lUn&re& ot tbe
one more swift movement would enable him to
shoot.
But not the panther only had been startled by the
breaking brand, the leaping flame. The young doe
had leapt backward, so that a great birch trunk cut
off her view of the fire. The first alarm gone by,
she moved to recover her post of vantage. Very
stealthily and silently she moved, but the motion
caught the panther's eye.
The man noted a change in the direction of the
beast's gaze, a change in the light of his eye-
balls. There was no more hate in them, no more
doubt and dread; only hunger, and eager triumph.
As softly as an owl's wings move through the
coverts, the great beast drew back, and started to
descend from the tree. He would go stalk deer,
drink warm deer's blood, and leave the dangerous
sleeper to his dreams.
But the man considered. Panthers were indeed
very few in New Brunswick, and undeniably inter-
esting. But he loved the deer ; and to this particu-
lar doe he felt that he perhaps owed his life. The
debt should be paid in full.
As the panther turned to slip down the trunk
of the tree, the man sat up straight. He took
careful but almost instantaneous aim, at a point
TEbe Watcbers of tbe Campsite 269
just behind the beast's fore-shoulder. At the report
the great body fell limp, a huddled heap of fur and
long bared fangs. The man sprang to his feet
and stirred the camp-fire to a blaze. And the doe,
her heart pounding with panic, her curiosity all
devoured in consuming terror, went crashing off
through the bushes.
TOben Gwtliabt f alls on tbe Stump
Xota
(HE wet, chill first of the spring, its black-
ness made tender by the lilac wash of
I the afterglow, lay upon the high, open
stretches of the stump lots. The winter-whitened
stumps, the sparse patches of juniper and bay just
budding, the rough-mossed hillocks, the harsh
boulders here and there up-thrusting from the soil,
the swampy hollows wherein a coarse grass began
to show green, all seemed anointed, as it were, to an
ecstasy of peace by the chrism of that paradisal
colour. Against the lucid immensity of the April
sky the thin tops of five or six soaring ram-pikes
aspired like violet flames. Along the skirts of the
stump lots a fir wood reared a ragged-crested wall
of black against the red amber of the horizon.
Late that afternoon, beside a juniper thicket not
far from the centre of the stump lots, a young black
and white cow had given birth to her first calf. The
little animal had been licked assiduously by the
*73
274 Ube Hin&refc or tbe THflilfc
mother's caressing tongue till its colour began to
show of a rich dark red. Now it had struggled
to its feet, and, with its disproportionately long,
thick legs braced wide apart, was beginning to
nurse. Its blunt wet muzzle and thick lips tugged
eagerly, but somewhat blunderingly as yet, at the
unaccustomed teats; and its tail lifted, twitching
with delight, as the first warm streams of mother
milk went down its throat. It was a pathetically
awkward, unlovely little figure, not yet advanced to
that youngling winsomeness which is the heritage,
to some degree and at some period, of the infancy
of all the kindreds that breathe upon the earth.
But to the young mother's eyes it was the most
beautiful of things. With her head twisted far
around, she nosed and licked its heaving flanks as
it nursed ; and between deep, ecstatic breathings she
uttered in her throat low murmurs, unspeakably
tender, of encouragement and caress. The delicate
but pervading flood of sunset colour had the effect
of blending the ruddy-hued calf into the tones of
the landscape; but the cow's insistent blotches of
black and white stood out sharply, refusing to har-
monise. The drench of violet light was of no avail
to soften their staring contrasts. They made her
vividly conspicuous across the whole breadth of the
TClben Uwiliabt ffalls on tbe Stump Xots 275
stump lots, to eyes that watched her from the forest
coverts.
The eyes that watched her long, fixedly, hun-
grily were small and red. They belonged to a
lank she-bear, whose gaunt flanks and rusty coat
proclaimed a season of famine in the wilderness.
She could not see the calf, which was hidden by
a hillock and some juniper scrub; but its presence
was very legibly conveyed to her by the mother's
solicitous watchfulness. After a motionless scru-
tiny from behind the screen of fir branches, the
lean bear stole noiselessly forth from the shadows
into the great wash of violet light. Step by step,
and very slowly, with the patience that endures be-
cause confident of its object, she crept toward that
oasis of mothering joy in the vast emptiness of the
stump lots. Now crouching, now crawling, turn-
ing to this side and to that, taking advantage of
every hollow, every thicket, every hillock, every
aggressive stump, her craft succeeded in eluding
even the wild and menacing watchfulness of the
young mother's eyes.
The spring had been a trying one for the lank
she-bear. Her den, in a dry tract of hemlock wood
some furlongs back from the stump lots, was a
snug little cave under the uprooted base of a lone
276 Ube ftinftret) ot tbe icuio
pine, which had somehow grown up among the
alien hemlocks only to draw down upon itself at
last, by its superior height, the fury of a passing
hurricane. The winter had contributed but scanty
snowfall to cover the bear in her sleep; and the
March thaws, unseasonably early and ardent, had
called her forth to activity weeks too soon. Then
frosts had come with belated severity, sealing
away the budding tubers, which are the bear's chief
dependence for spring diet; and worst of all, a
long stretch of intervale meadow by the neighbour-
ing river, which had once been rich in ground-nuts,
had been ploughed up the previous spring and sub-
jected to the producing of oats and corn. When
she was feeling the pinch of meagre rations, and
when the fat which a liberal autumn of blueberries
had laid up about her ribs was getting as shrunken
as the last snow in the thickets, she gave birth to
two hairless and hungry little cubs. They were
very blind, and ridiculously small to be born of
so big a mother; and having so much growth to
make during the next few months, their appetites
were immeasurable. They tumbled, and squealed,
and tugged at their mother's teats, and grew aston-
ishingly, and made huge haste to cover their bodies
with fur of a soft and silken black; and all this
TRttben TTwfltabt jfalls on tbe Stump %ots 277
vitality of theirs made a strenuous demand upon
their mother's milk. There were no more bee-
trees left in the neighbourhood. The long wander-
ings which she was forced to take in her search for
roots and tubers were in themselves a drain upon
her nursing powers. At last, reluctant though she
was to attract the hostile notice of the settlement,
she found herself forced to hunt on the borders of
the sheep pastures. Before all else in life was it
important to her that these two tumbling little ones
in the den should not go hungry. Their eyes were
open now small and dark and whimsical, their
ears quaintly large and inquiring for their roguish
little faces. Had she not been driven by the unkind
season to so much hunting and foraging, she would
have passed near all her time rapturously in the
den under the pine root, fondling those two soft
miracles of her world.
With the killing of three lambs at widely scat-
tered points, so as to mislead retaliation things
grew a little easier for the harassed bear ; and pres-
ently she grew bolder in tampering with the crea-
tures under man's protection. With one swift,
secret blow of her mighty paw she struck down
a young ewe which had strayed within reach of
her hiding-place. Dragging her prey deep into
278 Ube Itiufcret) of tbe TWUI&
the woods, she fared well upon it for some days,
and was happy with her growing cubs. It was
just when she had begun to feel the fasting which
came upon the exhaustion of this store that, in a
hungry hour, she sighted the conspicuous markings
of the black and white cow.
It is altogether unusual for the black bear of
the eastern woods to attack any quarry so large
as a cow, unless under the spur of fierce hunger
or fierce rage. The she-bear was powerful beyond
her fellows. She had the strongest possible incen-
tive to bold hunting, and she had lately grown con-
fident beyond her wont. Nevertheless, when she
began her careful stalking of this big game which
she coveted, she had no definite intention of forcing
a battle with the cow. She had observed that cows,
accustomed to the protection of man, would at times
leave their calves asleep and stray off some distance
in their pasturing. She had even seen calves left
all by themselves in a field, from morning till night,
and had wondered at such negligence in their
mothers. Now she had a confident idea that sooner
or later the calf would lie down to sleep, and the
young mother roam a little wide in search of the
scant young grass. Very softly, very self-effacingly,
she crept nearer step by step, following up the wind,
TKflben tlwilfgbt jfalls on tbe Stump Xots 279
till at last, undiscovered, she was crouching behind
a thick patch of juniper, on the slope of a little
hollow not ten paces distant from the cow and the
calf.
By this time the tender violet light was fading
to a grayness over hillock and hollow; and with
the deepening of the twilight the faint breeze, which
had been breathing from the northward, shifted
suddenly and came in slow, warm pulsations out of
the south. At the same time the calf, having nursed
sufficiently, and feeling his baby legs tired of the
weight they had not yet learned to carry, laid himself
down. On this the cow shifted her position. She
turned half round, and lifted her head high. As
she did so a scent of peril was borne in upon her
fine nostrils. She recognised it instantly. With
a snort of anger she sniffed again; then stamped
a challenge with her fore hoofs, and levelled the
lance-points of her horns toward the menace. The
next moment her eyes, made keen by the fear of
love, detected the black outline of the bear's head
through the coarse screen of the juniper. Without
a second's hesitation, she flung up her tail, gave
a short bellow, and charged.
The moment she saw herself detected, the bear
rose upon her hindquarters; nevertheless she was
2 8o Ube frtnbret) of tbe TWUfo
in a measure surprised by the sudden blind fury
of the attack. Nimbly she swerved to avoid it,
aiming at the same time a stroke with her mighty
forearm, which, if it had found its mark, would
have smashed her adversary's neck. But as she
struck out, in the act of shifting her position, a
depression of the ground threw her off her balance.
The next instant one sharp horn caught her slant-
ingly in the flank, ripping its way upward and
inward, while the mad impact threw her upon her
back.
Grappling, she had her assailant's head and
shoulders in a trap, and her gigantic claws cut
through the flesh and sinew like knives; but at
the desperate disadvantage of her position she
could inflict no disabling blow. The cow, on the
other hand, though mutilated and streaming with
blood, kept pounding with her whole massive
weight, and with short tremendous shocks crush-
ing the breath from her foe's ribs.
Presently, wrenching herself free, the cow drew
off for another battering charge; and as she did
so the bear hurled herself violently down the slope,
and gained her feet behind a dense thicket of bay
shrub. The cow, with one eye blinded and the
other obscured by blood, glared around for her
Wben Uwiligbt falls on tbe Stump Xots 283
in vain, then, in a panic of mother terror, plunged
back to her calf.
Snatching at the respite, the bear crouched down,
craving that invisibility which is the most faithful
shield of the furtive kindred. Painfully, and
leaving a drenched red trail behind her, she crept
off from the disastrous neighbourhood. Soon the
deepening twilight sheltered her. But she could
not make haste ; and she knew that death was close
upon her.
Once within the woods, she struggled straight
toward the den that held her young. She hungered
to die licking them. But destiny is as implacable as
iron to the wilderness people, and even this was
denied her. Just a half score of paces from the lair
in the pine root, her hour descended upon her.
There was a sudden redder and fuller gush upon
the trail; the last light of longing faded out of
her eyes; and she lay down upon her side.
The merry little cubs within the den were begin-
ning to expect her, and getting restless. As the
night wore on, and no mother came, they ceased to
be merry. By morning they were shivering with
hunger and desolate fear. But the doom of the
ancient wood was less harsh than its wont, and
spared them some days of starving anguish; for
lttn&re& of tbe TWIU&
about noon a pair of foxes discovered the dead
mother, astutely estimated the situation, and then,
with the boldness of good appetite, made their way
into the unguarded den.
As for the red calf, its fortune was ordinary. Its
mother, for all her wounds, was able to nurse and
cherish it through the night; and with morning
came a searcher from the farm and took it, with
the bleeding mother, safely back to the settlement.
There it was tended and fattened, and within a
few weeks found its way to the cool marble slabs
of a city market.
Iking of tbe
the king of the Mamozekel barrens
was born, he was one of the most un-
gainly of all calves, a moose-calf.
In the heart of a tamarack swamp, some leagues
south from Nictau Mountain, was a dry little knoll
of hardwood and pine undiscovered by the hunters,
out of the track of the hunting beasts. Neither
lynx, bear, nor panther had tradition of it. There
was little succulent undergrowth to tempt the moose
and the caribou. But there the wild plum each
summer fruited abundantly, and there a sturdy
brotherhood of beeches each autumn lavished their
treasure of three-cornered nuts; and therefore the
knoll was populous with squirrels and grouse.
Nature, in one of those whims of hers by which
she delights to confound the studious naturalist, had
chosen to keep this spot exempt from the law of
blood and fear which ruled the rest of her domains.
To be sure, the squirrels would now and then play
havoc with a nest of grouse eggs, or, in the absence
287
288 Ubc Hfnoreo of tbe
of their chisel-beaked parents, do murder on a nest
of young golden-wings ; but, barring the outbreaks of
these bright-eyed incorrigible marauders, bad
to their very toes, and attractive to their plumy tail-
tips, the knoll in the tamarack swamp was a
haven of peace amid the fierce but furtive warfare
of the wilderness.
On this knoll, when the arbutus breath of the
northern spring was scenting the winds of all the
Tobique country, the king was born, a moose-calf
more ungainly and of mightier girth and limb than
any other moose-calf of the Mamozekel. Never
had his mother seen such a one, and she a
mother of lordly bulls. He was uncouth, to be sure,
in any eyes but those of his kind, with his high
humped fore-shoulders, his long, lugubrious, over-
hanging snout, his big ears set low on his big
head, his little eyes crowded back toward his ears,
his long, big-knuckled legs, and the spindling, lank
diminutiveness of his hindquarters. A grotesque
figure, indeed, and lacking altogether in that pa-
thetic, infantile winsomeness which makes even
little pigs attractive. But any one who knew about
moose would have said, watching the huge baby
struggle to his feet and stand with sturdy legs well
braced, " There, if bears and bullets miss him till
Ube frtna ot tbe flDamosehel 289
his antlers get full spread, is the king of the Mamo-
zekel." Now, when his mother had licked him dry,
his coat showed a dark, very sombre, cloudy, secre-
tive brown, of a hue to be quite lost in the shadows
of the fir and hemlock thickets, and to blend con-
summately with the colour of the tangled alder
trunks along the clogged banks of the Mamozekel.
The young king's mother was perhaps the biggest
and most morose cow on all the moose ranges of
northern New Brunswick. She assuredly had no
peer on the barrens of the upper Tobique country.
She was also the craftiest. That was the reason
why, though she was dimly known and had been
blindly hunted all the way from Nictau Lake, over
Mamozekel, and down to Blue Mountain on the
main Tobique, she had never felt a bullet wound,
and had come to be regarded by the backwoods
hunters with something of a superstitious awe. It
was of her craft, too, that she had found this knoll
in the heart of the tamarack swamp, and had
guarded the secret of it from the herds. Hither,
at calving time, she would come by cunningly
twisted trails. Here she would pass the perilous
hours in safety, unharassed by the need of watching
against her stealthy foes. And when once she had
led her calf away from the retreat, she never re-
turned to it, save alone, and in another year.
290 ube Ifcinoreo of tbc TMUlfc
For three days the great cow stayed upon the
knoll, feeding upon the overhanging branch tips of
mountain-ash and poplar. This was good fodder,
for buds and twigs were swollen with sap, and succu-
lent. In those three days her sturdy young calf
made such gains in strength and stature that he
would have passed in the herd for a calf of two
weeks' growth. In mid-afternoon of the third day
she led the way down from the knoll and out across
the quaking glooms of the tamarack swamp. And
the squirrels in the budding branches chattered shrill
derision about their going.
The way led through the deepest and most per-
ilous part of the swamp; but the mother knew the
safe trail in all its windings. She knew where the
yielding surface of moss with black pools on either
side was not afloat on fathomless ooze, but sup-
ported by solid earth or a framework of ancient
tree roots. She shambled onward at a very rapid
walk, which forced the gaunt calf at her heels to
break now and then into the long-striding, tireless
trot which is the heritage of his race.
For perhaps an hour they travelled. Then, in
a little, partly open glade where the good sound
earth rose up sweet from the morass, and the moun-
tain-ash, the viburnum, and the moose-wood grew
tTbe Irtna of tbe flDamosefcel 29*
thinly, and the ground was starred with spring
blooms, painted trillium and wake-robin, clay-
tonia and yellow dog-tooth and wind-flower, they
stopped. The calf, tired from his first journeying,
nursed fiercely, twitching his absurd stub of a tail,
butting at his mother's udder with such discomfort-
ing eagerness that she had to rebuke him by stepping
aside and interrupting his meal. After several
experiences of this kind he took the hint, and put
curb upon his too robust impatience. The masterful
spirit of a king is liable to inconvenience its owner
if exercised prematurely.
By this time the pink light of sunset was begin-
ning to stain the western curves of branch and stem
and bud, changing the spring coolness of the place
into a delicate riot of fairy colour and light, inter-
volving form. Some shadows deepened, while
others disappeared. Certain leaves and blossoms
and pale limbs stood out with a clearness almost
startling, suddenly emphasised by the level rays,
while others faded from view. Though there was
no wind, the changed light gave an effect of noise-
less movement in the glade. And in the midst of
this gathering enchantment the mother moose set
herself to forage for her own meal.
Selecting a slim young birch-tree, whose top was
29 2 tlbe fUnfcreo of tbe
thick with twigs and greening buds, she pushed
against it with her massive chest till it bent nearly
to the ground. Then straddling herself along it,
she held it down securely between her legs, moved
forward till the succulent top was within easy
reach, and began to browse with leisurely jaws and
selective Teachings out of her long, discriminating
upper lip. The calf stood close by, watching with
interest, his legs sympathetically spread apart, his
head swung low from his big shoulders, his great
ears swaying slowly backward and forward, not
together, but one at a time. When the mother had
finished feeding, there were no buds, twigs or small
branches left on the birch sapling; and the sunset
colours had faded out of the glade. With dusk
a chilly air breathed softly through the trees, and
the mother led the way into a clump of thick balsam
firs near the edge of the good ground. In the heart
of the thicket she lay down for the night, facing
away from the wind ; and the calf, quick in percep-
tion as in growth, lay down close beside her in the
same position. He did not know at the time the
significance of the position, but he had a vague sense
of its importance. He was afterward to learn that
enemies were liable to approach his lair in the night,
and that as long as he slept with his back to the
"THE CALF STOOD CLOSE BY, WATCHING WITH INTEREST."
TTbe TkinQ of tbe flDamosefeel 295
wind, he could not be taken unawares. The wind
might be trusted to bring to his marvellous nostrils
timely notice of danger from the rear; while he
could depend upon his eyes and his spacious, sensi-
tive, unsleeping ears to warn him of anything as-
cending against the wind to attack him in front.
At the very first suggestion of morning the two
light sleepers arose. In the dusk of the fir thicket
the hungry calf made his meal. Then they came
forth into the grayness of the spectral spring dawn,
and the great cow proceeded as before to breast
down a birch sapling for fodder. Before the sun
was fairly up, they left the glade and resumed their
journey across the swamp.
It was mid-morning of a sweet-aired, radiant
day when they emerged from the swamp. Now,
through a diversified country of thick forests and
open levels, the mother moose swung forward on an
undeviating trail, perceptible only to herself. Pres-
ently the land began to dip. Then a little river
appeared, winding through innumerable alders, with
here and there a pond-like expansion full of young
lily-leaves; and the future king of the Mamozekel
looked upon his kingdom. But he did not recognise
it. He cared nothing for the little river of alders.
He was tired, and very hungry, and the moment
his mother halted he ran up and nursed vehemently.
296 Ube fUnoreo of tbe TDQIU&
IX.
Delicately filming with the first green, and spicy-
fragrant, were the young birch-trees on the slopes
about the Mamozekel water. From tree-top to
tree-top, across the open spaces, the rain-birds called
to each other with long falls of melody and sweetly
insistent iteration. In their intervals of stillness,
which came from time to time as if by some secret
and preconcerted signal, the hush was beaded, as
it were, with the tender and leisurely staccatos of
the chickadees. The wild kindreds of the Tobique
country were all happily busy with affairs of spring.
While the great cow was pasturing on birch-
twigs, the calf rested, with long legs tucked under
him, on the dry, softly carpeted earth beneath the
branches of a hemlock. At this pleasant pasturage
the mother moose was presently joined by her calf
of the previous season, a sturdy bull-yearling, which
ran up to her with a pathetic little bleat of delight,
as if he had been very desolate and bewildered
during the days of her strange absence. The
mother received him with good-natured indifference,
and went on pulling birch-tips. Then the yearling
came over and eyed with curiosity the resting calf,
the first moose-calf he had ever seen. The king.
"King of tbe flDamosefcel 297
unperturbed and not troubling himself to rise,
thrust forward his spacious ears, and reached out
a long inquiring nose to investigate the newcomer.
But the yearling was in doubt. He drew back,
planted his fore hoofs firmly, and lowered and
shook his head, challenging the stranger to a butting
bout. The old moose, which had kept wary eye upon
the meeting, now came up and stood over her young,
touching him once or twice lightly with her upper
lip. Then, swinging her great head to one side, she
glanced at the yearling, and made a soft sound in
her throat. Whether this were warning or mere per-
tinent information, the yearling understood that his
smaller kinsman was to be let alone, and not troub-
led with challenges. With easy philosophy, he
accepted the situation, doubtless not concerned to
understand it, and turned his thoughts to the ever
fresh theme of forage.
Through the spring and summer the little family
of three fed never far from the Mamozekel stream ;
and the king grew with astonishing speed. Of
other moose families they saw little, for the mother,
jealous and overbearing in her strength, would tol-
erate no other cows on her favourite range. Some-
times they saw a tall bull, with naked forehead,
come down to drink or to pull lily-stems in the
'9* be ftitrtreb ot tbe Wttt>
still pools at sunset. But the bull, feeling him-
self discrowned and unlordly in the absence of his
antlers, paid no attention to either cows or calves.
While waiting for autumn to restore to his forehead
its superb palmated adornments, he was haughty
and seclusive.
By the time summer was well established in the
land, the moose-calf had begun to occupy himself
diligently with the primer-lessons of life. Keeping
much at his mother's head, he soon learned to pluck
the tops of tall seeding grasses; though such low-
growing tender herbage as cattle and horses love,
he never learned to crop. His mother, like all his
tribe, was too long in the legs and short in the neck
to pasture close to the ground. He was early taught,
however, what succulent pasturage of root and stem
and leaf the pools of Mamozekel could supply; and
early his sensitive upper lip acquired the wisdom
to discriminate between the wholesome water-plants
and such acrid, unfriendly growths as the water-
parsnip and the spotted cowbane. Most pleasant
the little family found it, in the hot, drowsy after-
noons, to wade out into the leafy shallows and
feed at leisure belly-deep in the cool, with no sound
save their own comfortable splashings, or the shrill
clatter of a kingfisher winging past up-stream.
frtng of tbe ADamoseftel 199
Their usual feeding hours were just before sunrise,
a little before noon, and again in the late afternoon,
till dark. The rest of the time they would lie hidden
in the deepest thickets, safe, but ever watchful, their
great ears taking in and interpreting all the myriad
fluctuating noises of the wilderness.
The hours of foraging were also for the
young king, in particular, whose food was mostly
provided by his mother the hours of lesson and
the hours of play. In the pride of his growing
strength he quickly developed a tendency to butt
at everything and test his prowess. His yearling
brother was always ready to meet his desires in this
fashion, and the two would push against each other
with much grunting, till at last the elder, growing
impatient, would thrust the king hard back upon his
haunches, and turn aside indifferently to his brows-
ing. Little by little it became more difficult for the
yearling to close the bout in this easy way; but
he never guessed that in no distant day the contests
would end in a very different manner. He did
not know that, for a calf of that same spring, his
lightly tolerated playfellow was big and strong
and audacious beyond all wont of the wide-antlered
kindred.
The young king was always athrill with curiosity,
300 zrbe Ikinorefc of tbe
full of interest in all the wilderness folk that
chanced to come in his view. The shyest of the
furtive creatures were careless about letting him
see them, both his childishness and his race being
guarantee of good will. Very soon, therefore, he
became acquainted, in a distant, uncomprehending
fashion, with the hare and the mink, the wood-
mouse and the muskrat; while the mother mallard
would float amid her brood within a yard or two of
the spot where he was pulling at the water-lilies.
One day, however, he came suddenly upon a por-
cupine which was crossing a bit of open ground,
came upon it so suddenly that the surly little beast
was startled and rolled himself up into a round,
bristling ball. This was a strange phenomenon
indeed ! He blew upon the ball, two or three hard
noisy breaths from wide nostrils. Then he was
so rash as to thrust at it, tentatively rather than
roughly, with his inquisitive nose, for he was
most anxious to know what it meant. There was
a quiver in the ball; and he jumped back, shaking
his head, with two of the sharp spines sticking in
his sensitive upper lip.
In pain and fright, yet with growing anger, he
ran to his mother where she was placidly cropping
a willow-top. But she was not helpful. She knew
THE MOTHER MALLARD WOULD FLOAT AMID HER BROOD."
Ube Hing ot tbe /IDamosefeel 303
nothing 1 of the properties of porcupine quills. See-
ing what was the matter, she set the example of
rubbing her nose smartly against a stump. The
king did likewise. Now, for burrs, this would
have been all very well ; but porcupine quills the
malignant little intruders throve under such treat-
ment, and worked their way more deeply into the
tender tissues. Smarting and furious, the young
monarch rushed back with the purpose of stamping
that treacherous ball of spines to fragments under
his sharp hoofs. But the porcupine, meanwhile,
had discreetly climbed a tree, whence it looked
down with scornful red eyes, bristling its barbed
armory, and daring the angry calf to come up and
fight. For days thereafter the young king suffered
from a nose so hot and swollen that it was hard
for him to browse, and almost impossible for him
to nurse. Then came relief, as the quills worked
their way through, one dropping out, and the other
getting chewed up with a lily-root. But the young
moose never forgot his grudge against the porcu-
pine family; and catching one, years after, in a
poplar sapling, he bore the sapling down and trod
his enemy to bits. In his wrath, however, he did
not forget the powers and properties of the quills.
He took good care that none should pierce the
tender places of his feet.
304 Ube frtufcreo of tbe TKIlflo
Some weeks after his meeting with the porcupine,
when his nose and his spirits together had quite
recovered, he made a new acquaintance. The moose
family had by this time worked much farther up
the Mamozekel, into a region of broken ground, and
steep up-thrusts of rock. One day, while investi-
gating the world at a little distance from his mother
and brother, he saw a large, curious-looking animal
at the top of a rocky slope. It was a light brown-
gray in colour, with a big, round face, high-tufted
ears, round, light, cold eyes, long whiskers brushed
back from under its chin, very long, sharp teeth
displayed in its snarlingly open jaws, and big round
pads of feet. The lynx glared at the young king,
scornfully unacquainted with his kingship. And the
young king stared at the lynx with lively, unhostile
interest. Then the lynx cast a wary glance all
about, saw no sign of the mother moose (who was
feeding on the other side of the rock), concluded
that this was such an opportunity as he had long
been looking for, and began creeping swiftly,
stealthily, noiselessly, down the slope of rocks.
Any other moose-calf, though of thrice the young
king's months, would have run away. But not so
he. The stranger seemed unfriendly. He would
try a bout of butting with him. He stamped his
ttbe iking of tbe flDamo3efcel 305
feet, shook his lowered head, snorted, and advanced
a stride or two. At the same time, he uttered a
harsh, very abrupt, bleating cry of defiance, the
infantile precursor of what his mighty, forest-
daunting bellow was to be in later years. The lynx,
though he well knew that this ungainly youngster
could not withstand his onslaught for a moment,
was nevertheless astonished by such a display of
spirit; and he paused for a moment to consider
it. Was it possible that unguessed resources lay
behind this daring? He would see.
It was a critical moment. A very few words
more would have sufficed for the conclusion of this
chronicle, but for the fact that the young king's
bleat of challenge had reached other ears than those
of the great lynx. The old moose, at her pasturing
behind the rock, heard it too. Startled and anxious,
she came with a rush to find out what it meant ; and
the yearling, full of curiosity, came at her heels.
When she saw the lynx, the long hair on her neck
stood up with fury, and with a roar she launched
her huge, dark bulk against him. But for such an
encounter the big cat had no stomach. He knew
that he would be pounded into paste in half a minute.
With a snarl, he sprang backward, as if his muscles
had been steel springs suddenly loosed ; and before
36 Ube lUnoreo of tbe TKflilb
his assailant was half-way up the slope, he was
glaring down upon her from the safe height of
a hemlock limb.
This, to the young king, seemed a personal vic-
tory. The mother's efforts to make him understand
that lynxes were dangerous had small effect upon
him; and the experience advanced him not at all
in his hitherto unlearned lesson of fear.
Even he, however, for all his kingly heart, was
destined to learn that lesson, was destined to
have it so seared into his spirit that the remem-
brance should, from time to time, unnerve, humili-
ate, defeat him, through half the years of his
sovereignty.
It came about in this way, one blazing August
afternoon.
The old moose and the yearling were at rest,
comfortably chewing the cud in a spruce covert
close to the water. But the king was in one of
those restless fits which, all through his calfhood,
kept driving him forward in quest of experience.
The wind was almost still; but such as there was
blew up stream. Up against it he wandered for
a little way, and saw nothing but a woodchuck,
which was a familiar sight to him. Then he turned
and drifted carelessly down the wind. Having
frtng of tbe flDamosefeel 37
passed the spruce thicket, his nostrils received mes-
sages from his mother and brother in their quiet con-
cealment. The scent was companion to him, and he
wandered on. Presently it faded away from the
faintly pulsing air. Still he went on.
Presently he passed a huge, half-decayed wind-
fall, thickly draped in shrubbery and vines. No
sooner had he passed than the wind brought him
from this dense hiding-place a pungent, unfamiliar
scent. There was something ominous in the smell,
something at which his heart beat faster; but he
was not afraid. He stopped at once, and moved
back slowly toward the windfall, sniffing with
curiosity, his ears alert, his eyes striving to pierce
the mysteries of the thicket.
He moved close by the decaying trunk without
solving the enigma. Then, as the wind puffed a
thought more strongly, he passed by and lost the
scent. At once he swung about to pursue the
investigation; and at the same instant an intuitive
apprehension of peril made him shudder, and shrink
away from the windfall.
He turned not an instant too soon. What he
saw was a huge, black, furry head and shoulders
leaning over the windfall, a huge black paw, with
knife-like claws, lifting for a blow that would break
308 ttbe l&infcrefc of tbe
his back like a bulrush. He was already moving,
already turning, and with his muscles gathered.
That saved him. Quick as a flash of light he
sprang, wildly. Just as quickly, indeed, came down
the stroke of those terrific claws. But they fell
short of their intended mark. As the young moose
sprang into the air, the claws caught him slantingly
on the haunch. They went deep, ripping hide and
flesh almost to the bone, a long, hideous wound.
Before the blow could be repeated, the calf was
far out of reach, bleating with pain and terror. The
bear, much disappointed, peered after him with little
red, malicious eyes, and greedily licked the sweet
blood from his claws.
The next instant the mother moose burst from her
thicket, the long hair of her neck and shoulders
stiffly erect with rage. She had understood well
enough that agonised cry of the young king. She
paused but a second, to give him a hasty lick of
reassurance, then charged down upon the covert
around the windfall. She knew that only a bear
could have done that injury; and she knew, without
any help from ears, eyes, or nose, that the windfall
was just the place for a bear's lying-in-wait. With
an intrepidity beyond the boldest dreams of any
other moose-cow on the MamozekeL she launched
herself crashing into the covert.
"BUT THEY FELL SHORT OF THEIR INTENDED MARK."
Ube frtna of tbe jflDamojefeel 3"
But her avenging fury found no bear to meet
it. The bear knew well this mighty moose-cow,
having watched her from many a hiding-place, and
shrewdly estimated her prowess. He had effaced
himself, melting away through the underwood as
noiselessly and swiftly as a weasel. Plenty of
the strong bear scent the old moose found in the
covert, and it stung her to frenzy. She stamped
and tore down the vines, and sent the rotten wood
of the windfall flying in fragments. Then she
emerged, powdered with debris, and roared and
glared about for the enemy. But the wily bear was
already far away, well burdened with discretion.
in.
In a few weeks the king's healthy flesh, assidu-
ously licked by his mother, healed perfectly, leaving
long, hairless scars upon his hide, which turned,
in course of time, from livid to a leaden whitish hue.
But while his flesh healed perfectly, his spirit was
in a different case. Thenceforward, one great fear
lurked in his heart, ready to leap forth at any
instant the fear of the bear. It was the only
fear he knew, but it was a terrible one; and when,
two months later, he again caught that pungent
scent in passing a thicket, he ran madly for an hour
tTbe 1tfn&re& of tbe THttflfc
before he recovered his wits and stole back, humili-
ated and exhausted, to his mother's pasture-grounds.
In the main, however, he was soon his old, bold,
investigating self, his bulk and his sagacity growing
vastly together. Ere the first frosts had crimsoned
the maples and touched the birches to a shimmer of
pale gold, he could almost hold his own by sheer
strength against his yearling brother's weight, and
sometimes, for a minute or two, worst him by feint
and strategy. When he came, by chance, in the
crisp, free-roving weather of the fall, upon other
moose-calves of that year's birth, they seemed
pygmies beside him, and gave way to him respect-
fully as to a yearling.
About this time he experienced certain qualms of
loneliness, which bewildered him and took much
of the interest out of life. His mother began to
betray an unexpected indifference, and his childish
heart missed her caresses. He was not driven away,
but he was left to himself; while she would stride
up and down the open, gravelly meadows by the
water, sniffing the air, and at times uttering a
short, harsh roar which made him eye her uneasily.
One crisp night, when the round October moon
wrought magic in the wilderness, he heard his
mother's call answered by a terrific, roaring bellow,
trbe IfcinQ of tbe flDamoseftel 3*3
which made his heart leap. Then there was a crash-
ing through the underbrush; and a tall bull strode
forth into the light, his antlers spreading like oak
branches from either side of his forehead. Pru-
dence, or deference, or a mixture of the two, led
the young king to lay aside his wonted inquisitive-
ness and withdraw into the thickets without attract-
ing the notice of this splendid and formidable visi-
tor. During the next few days he saw the big bull
very frequently, and found himself calmly ignored.
Prudence and deference continued their good offices,
however, and he was careful not to trespass on the
big stranger's tolerance during those wild, mad,
magical autumn days.
One night, about the middle of October, the king
saw from his thicket a scene which filled him with
excitement and awe, swelled his veins almost to
bursting, and made his brows ache, as if the antlers
were already pushing to birth beneath the skin. It
all came about in this fashion. His mother, stand-
ing out in the moonlight by the water, had twice
with outstretched muzzle uttered her call, when it
was answered not only by her mate, the tall bull,
approaching along the shore, but by another great
voice from up the hillside. Instantly the tall bull
was in a rage. He rushed up to the cow, touched
Ube lrtn&ret> of tbc
her with his nose, and then, after a succession of
roars which were answered promptly from the hill-
side, he moved over to the edge of the open and
began thrashing the bushes with his antlers. A
great crashing of underbrush arose some distance
away, and drew near swiftly ; and in a few minutes
another bull burst forth violently into the open.
He was young and impetuous, or he would have
halted a moment before leaving cover, and stealthily
surveyed the situation. But not yet had years and
overthrows taught him the ripe moose wisdom ; and
with a reckless heart he committed himself to the
combat.
The newcomer had barely the chance to see
where he was, before the tall bull was upon him.
He wheeled in time, however, and got his guard
down; but was borne back upon his haunches by
the terrific shock of the charge. In a moment or
two he recovered the lost ground, for youth had
given him strength, if not wisdom; and the tall
bull, his eyes flame-red with wrath, found himself
fairly matched by this shorter, stockier antagonist.!
The night forthwith became tempestuous with
gruntings, bellowings, the hard clashing of antlers,
the stamping of swift and heavy feet. The thin
turf was torn up. The earthy gravel was sent flying
of tbe fl&amosehel 315
from the furious hoofs. From his covert the young
king strained eager eyes upon the fight, his sympa-
thies all with the tall bull whom he had regarded
reverently from the first moment he saw him. But
as for the cow, she moved up from the waterside
and looked on with a fine impartiality. What con-
cerned her was chiefly that none but the bravest
and strongest should be her mate, a question
which only fighting could determine. Her favour
would go with victory.
As it appeared, the rivals were fairly matched
in vigour and valour. But among moose, as
among men, brains count in the end. When the
tall bull saw that, in a matter of sheer brawn, the
sturdy stranger might hold him, he grew disgusted
at the idea of settling such a vital question by mere
butting and shoving. The red rage faded in his
eyes, and a colder light took its place. On a sudden,
when his foe had given a mighty thrust, he yielded,
slipped his horns from the lock, and jumped nimbly
aside. The stranger lunged forward, almost stum-
bling to his knees.
This was the tall bull's opportunity. In a whirl-
wind of fury he thrust upon the enemy's flank,
goring him, and bearing him down. The latter,
being short and quick-moving, recovered his feet
316 ttbe Itfnoreo of tbe Wilo
in a second, and wheeled to present his guard. But
the tall bull was quick to maintain the advantage.
He, too, had shifted ground; and now he caught
his antagonist in the rear. There was no resisting
such an attack. With hind legs weakly doubling
under him, with the weight of doom descending
upon his defenceless rump, the rash stranger was
thrust forward, bellowing madly, and striving in
vain to brace himself. His humiliation was com-
plete. With staring eyes and distended nostrils he
was hustled across the meadow and over* the edge,
of the bank. With a huge splash, and carrying with
him a shower of turf and gravel, he fell into the
stream. Once in the water, and his courage well
cooled, he did not wait for a glance at his snorting
and stamping conqueror on the bank above, but
waded desperately across, dripping, bleeding,
crushed in spirit, and vanished into the woods.
In the thicket, the king's heart swelled as if the
victory had been his own.
By and by, when the last of the leaves had flut-
tered down with crisp whisperings from the birch
and ash, maple and poplar, and the first enduring
snows were beginning to change the face of the
world, the tall bull seemed to lay aside his haughti-
ness. He grew carelessly good-natured toward the
Ube Ifcino of tbe /IDamo3efcel 317
young king and the yearling, and frankly took
command of the little herd. As the snow deepened,
he led the way northward toward the Nictau Lake
and chose winter quarters on the wooded southward
slopes of Bald Mountain, where there were hemlock
groves for shelter and an abundance of young hard-
wood growth for browsing.
This leisurely migration was in the main unevent-
ful, and left but one sharp impression on the young
king's memory. On a wintry morning, when the
sunrise was reaching long pink-saffron fingers
across the thin snow, a puff of wind brought with
it from a tangle of stumps and rocks a breath of
that pungent scent so hateful to a moose's nostrils.
The whole herd stopped; and the young king, his
knees quaking under him and his eyes staring with
panic, crowded close against his mother's flank.
The tall bull stamped and bellowed his defiance to
the enemy, but the enemy, being discreet, made
no reply whatever. It is probable, indeed, that
he was preparing his winter quarters, and getting
too drowsy to hear or heed the angry challenge;
but if he did hear it no doubt he noiselessly with-
drew himself till the dangerous travellers had gone
by. In a few minutes the herd resumed its march,
the king keeping close to his mother's side,
instead of in his proper place in the line.
3*8 ^be iktnoreo of tbe
The big-antlered bull now chose his site for the
" yard," with " verge and room enough " for all
contingencies. The " yard " was an ample acreage
of innumerable winding paths, trodden ever deeper
as the snows accumulated. These paths led to every
spot of browse, every nook of shelter, at the same
time twisting and crossing in a maze of intricacies.
Thick piled the snows about the little herd, and the
northern gales roared over the hemlocks, and the
frost sealed the white world down into silence. But
It was such a winter as the moose kin loved. No
wolves or hunters came to trouble them, and the
months passed pleasantly. When the days were
lengthening and the hearts of all the wild folk
beginning to dream of the yet unsignalled spring,
the young king was astonished to see the great
antlers of his leader fall off. Seeing that their
owner left them lying unregarded on the snow, he
went up and sniffed at them wonderingly, and pon-
dered the incident long and vainly in his heart.
When the snows shrank away, departing with
a sound of many waters, and spring returned to
the Tobique country, the herd broke up. First
the dis-antlered bull drifted off on his own affairs.
Then the two-year-old went, with no word of reason
or excuse. Though a well-grown young bull, he
"THICK PILED THE SNOWS ABOUT THE LITTLE HERD."
Hbe Ikina of tbe flDamosefoel 321
was now little larger or heavier than the king; and
the king was now a yearling, with the stature and
presence of a two-year-old. In a playful butting
contest, excited by the joy of life which April put
into their veins, he worsted his elder brother; and
this, perhaps, though taken in good part, hastened
the latter's going.
A few days later the old cow grew restless. She
and the king turned their steps backward toward
the Mamozekel, feeding as they went. Soon they
found themselves in their old haunts, which the
king remembered very well. Then one day, while
the king slept without suspicion of evil, the old
cow slipped away stealthily, and sought her secret
refuge in the heart of the cedar swamp. When
th king awoke, he found himself alone in the
thicket.
All that day he was most unhappy. For some
hours he could not eat, but strayed hither and
thither, questing and wondering. Then, when
hunger drove him to browse on the tender birch-
twigs, he would stop every minute or two to call
in his big, gruff, pathetic bleat, and look around
eagerly for an answer. No answer came from the
deserting mother, by this time far away in the
swamp. .
322 Ube Htnoreo of tbe TKIUlo
But there were ears in the wilderness that heard
and heeded the call of the desolate yearling. A
pair of hunting lynxes paused at the sound, licked
their chops, and crept forward with a green light
in their wide, round eyes.
Their approach was noiseless as thought, but
the king, on a sudden, felt a monition of their
coming. Whirling sharply about, he saw them
lurking in the underbrush. He recognised the
breed. This was the same kind of creature which
he had been ready to challenge in his first calfhood.
No doubt, it would have been more prudent for
him to withdraw ; but he was in no mood for con-
cession. His sore heart made him ill-tempered.
His lonely bleat became a bellow of wrath. He
stamped the earth, shook his head as if thrashing
the underbrush with imaginary antlers, and then
charged madly upon the astonished cats. This was
no ordinary moose-calf, they promptly decided ; and
in a second they were speeding away with great
bounds, gray shadows down the gray vistas of the
wood. The king glared after them for a mo-
ment, and then went back to his feeding, greatly
comforted.
It was four days before his mother came back,
bringing a lank calf at her heels. He was glad to
"Ring of tbe flDamoaefeel 323
see her, and contentedly renewed the companionship ;
but in those four days he had learned full self-
reliance, and his attitude was no longer that of
the yearling calf. It had become that of the equal.
As for the lank little newcomer, he viewed it with
careless complaisance, and no more dreamed of
playing with it than if it had been a frog or a
chipmunk.
The summer passed with little more event for
the king than his swift increase in stature. One
lesson then learned, however, though but vaguely
comprehended at the time, was to prove of incal-
culable value in after years. He learned to shun
man, not with fear, indeed, for he never learned
to fear anything except bears, but with aversion,
and a certain half-disdainful prudence. It was as
if he came to recognise in man the presence of
powers which he was not anxious to put to trial,
lest he should be forced to doubt his own supremacy.
It was but a slight incident that gave him the
beginning of this valuable wisdom. As he lay rumi-
nating one day beside his mother and the gaunt
calf, in a spruce covert near the water, a strange
scent was wafted in to his nostrils. It carried with
it a subtle warning. His mother touched him with
her nose, conveying a silent yet eloquent monition,
324 Ube fUnfcrefc of tbe WU&
and got upon her feet with no more sound than if
she had been compact of thistle-down. From their
thicket shelter the three stared forth, moveless and
unwinking, ears forward, nostrils wide. Then a
canoe with two men came into view, paddling lazily,
and turning to land. To the king, they looked not
dangerous ; but every detail of them their shape,
motion, colour, and, above all, their ominous scent
stamped itself in his memory. Then, to his great
surprise, his mother silently signalled the gravest
and most instant menace, and forthwith faded back
through the thicket with inconceivably stealthy
motion. The king and the calf followed with like
care, the king, though perplexed, having faith
in his mother's wise woodcraft. Not until they had
put good miles between themselves and strange-
smelling newcomers did the old moose call a halt;
and from all this precaution the king realised that
the mysterious strangers were something to be
avoided by moose.
That summer the king saw nothing more of the
man-creatures, and he crossed the scent of no
more bears. His great heart, therefore, found no
check to its growing arrogance and courage. When
the month of the falling leaves and the whirring
partridge-coveys again came round, he felt a new
Ube Icing of tbc flDamosefcel 3*5
pugnacity swelling in his veins, and found himself
uttering challenges, he knew not why, with his yet
half infantile bellow. When, at length, his mother
began to pace the open meadow by the Mamozekel,
and startle the moonlit silences with her mating
call, he was filled with strange anger. But this
was nothing to his rage when the calls were an-
swered by a wide-antlered bull. This time the king
refused to slink obsequiously to cover. He waited
in the open; and he eyed the new wooer in a
fashion so truculent that at length he attracted
notice.
For his dignity, if not for his experience, this
was most unfortunate. The antlered stranger noted
his size, his attitude of insolence, and promptly
charged upon him. He met the charge, in his insane
audacity, but was instantly borne down. As he
staggered to his feet he realised his folly, and
turned to withdraw, not in terror, but in ac-
knowledgment of superior strength. Such a dig-
nified retreat, however, was not to be allowed him.
The big bull fell upon him again, prodding him
cruelly. He was hustled ignominiously across the
meadow, and into the bushes. Thence he fled,
bleating with impotent wrath and shame.
In his humiliation he fled far down along the river,
326 ZTbe Kinoreo of tbe
through alder swamps which he had never traversed,
by pools in which he had never pulled the lilies.
Onward he pressed, intent on placing irrevocably
behind him the scene of his chagrin.
At length he came out upon the fair river basin
where the Mamozekel, the Serpentine, and the
Nictau, tameless streams, unite to form the main
Tobique. Here he heard the call of a young cow,
a voice thinner and higher than his mother's
deep-chested notes. With an impulse which he did
not understand, he pushed forward to answer the
summons, no longer furtive, but noisily trampling
the brush. Just then, however, a pungent smell
stung his nostrils. There, not ten paces distant, was
a massive black shape standing out in the moonlight.
Panic laid grip upon his heart, chilling every vein.
He wheeled, splashed across the shallow waters of
the Nictau, and fled away northward on tireless feet.
That winter the king yarded alone, like a morose
old bull, far from his domain of the Mamozekel.
In the spring he came back, but restricted his range
to the neighbourhood of the Forks. And he saw
his mother no more.
That summer he grew his first antlers. As
antlers, indeed, they were no great thing; but
they started out bravely, a massive cylindrical bar
luna of tbe flDamosefcel 327
thrusting forth laterally, unlike the pointing horns
of deer and caribou, from either side of his forehead.
For all this sturdy start, their spiking and palmation
did not amount to much; but he was inordinately
proud of them, rubbing off the velvet with care
when it began to itch, and polishing assiduously at
the hardened horn. By the time the October moon
had come round again to the Tobique country, he
counted these first antlers a weapon for any en-
counter ; and, indeed, with his bulk and craft behind
them, they were formidable.
It was not long before they were put to the test.
One night, as he stood roaring and thrashing the
bushes on the bluff overlooking the Forks, he heard
the call of a young cow a little way down the shore.
Gladly he answered. Gladly he sped to the tryst.
Strange ecstasies, the madness of the night spell, and
the white light's sorcery made his heart beat and
his veins run sweet fire. But suddenly all this
changed; for another roar, a taunting challenge,
answered him; and another bull broke from covert
on the other side of the sandy level where stood
the young cow coquettishly eyeing both wooers.
The new arrival was much older than the king,
and nobly antlered; but in matter of inches the
young king was already his peer. In craft, arro-
328 zrbe frtufcrefc of tbc KHU&
gance, and self-confident courage the king had an
advantage that outweighed the deficiency in antlers.
The fury of his charge spelled victory from the
first; and though the battle was prolonged, the
issue was decided at the outset, as the interested
young cow soon perceived. In about a half-hour
it was all over. The wise white moon of the
wilderness looked down understandingly upon the
furrowed sandspit, the pleased young cow, and the
king making diffident progress with his first wooing.
Some distance down the river-bank, she caught
glimpses of the other bull, whose antlers had not
saved him, fleeing in shame, with bleeding flanks
and neck, through the light-patched shadows of the
forest.
IV.
During the next four years the king learned to
grow such antlers as had never before been seen in all
the Tobique country. So tall, impetuous, and mas-
terful he grew, that the boldest bulls, recognising the
vast reverberations of his challenge, would smother
their wrath and slip noiselessly away from his neigh-
bourhood. Rumours of his size and his great antlers
in some way got abroad among the settlements;
but so crafty was he in shunning men, whom he
TEbe In no of tbe flDamc^efeel 329
did not really fear, and whom he was wont to
study intently from safe coverts, that there was
never a hunter who could boast of having got a
shot at him.
Once, and once only, did he come into actual,
face to face conflict with the strange man-creature.
It was one autumn evening, at the first of the
season. By the edge of a little lake, he heard the
call of a cow. Having already found a mate, he
was somewhat inattentive, and did not answer; but
something strange in the call made him suspicious,
and he stole forward, under cover, to make an
observation. The call was repeated, seeming to
come from a little, rushy island, a stone's throw
from shore. This time there came an answer,
not from the king, but from an eager bull rushing
up from the outlet of the lake. The king listened,
with some lazy interest, to the crashing and slashing
of the impetuous approach, thinking that if the visi-
tor were big enough to be worth while he would
presently go out and thrash him. When the visitor
did appear, however, bursting from the underbrush
and striding boldly down to the water's edge, a
strange thing happened. From the rushy island
came a spurt of flame, a sharp detonating report.
The bull jumped and wheeled in his tracks. An-
330 Ube frtnorefc of tbe WU6
other report, and he dropped without a kick. As
he lay in the pale light, close to the water, a canoe
shot out from the rushy island and landed some dis-
tance from the body. Two men sprang out. They
pulled up the canoe, leaving their rifles in it, and
ran up to skin the prize.
The king in his hiding-place understood. This
was what men could do, make a strange, menac-
ing sound, and kill moose with it. He boiled with
rage at this exhibition of their power, and suddenly
took up the quarrel of the slain bull. But by no
means did he lay aside his craft. Noiselessly he
moved, a vast and furtive shadow, down through
the thickets to a point where the underbrush nearly
touched the water. This brought him within a few
yards of the canoe, wherein the hunters had left
their rifles. Here he paused a few moments, pon-
dering. But as he pondered, redder and redder
grew his eyes; and suddenly, with a mad roar, he
burst from cover and charged.
Had the two men not been expert woodsmen,
one or the other would have been caught and
smashed to pulp. But their senses were on the
watch. Cut off as they were from the canoe and
from their weapons, their only hope was a tree.
Before the king was fairly out into view, they had
Ube ftfno of tbe flDamosefcel 331
understood the whole situation, sprung to their feet,
and sped off like hares. Just within the nearest
fringe of bushes grew a low-hanging beech-tree;
and into this they swung themselves, just as the
king came raging beneath. As it was, one of them
was nearly caught when he imagined himself quite
safe. The king reared his mighty bulk against
the trunk and with his keen-spiked antlers reached
upward fiercely after the fugitives, the nearest of
whom was saved only by a friendly branch which
intervened.
For nearly an hour the king stamped and stormed
beneath the branches, while the trapped hunters
alternately cursed his temper and wondered at his
stature. Then, with a swift change of purpose, he
wheeled and charged on the canoe. In two minutes
the graceful craft was reduced to raw material,
while the hunters in the tree-top, sputtering furi-
ously, vowed vengeance. All the kit, the tins, the
blankets, the boxes, were battered shapeless, and the
rifles thumped well down into the wet sand. In
the midst of the cataclysm, one of the rifles somehow
went off. The noise and the flash astonished the
king, but only added to his rage and made him more
thorough in his work of destruction. When there
was nothing left that seemed worth trampling upoa
332 ubc Kindred of tbc Mild
he returned to the tree, on which he had kept eye
all the time, and there nursed his wrath all night.
At the first of dawn, however, he came to the con-
clusion that the shivering things in the tree were
not worth waiting for. He swung off, and sought
his favourite pasturage, a mile or two away; and
the men, after making sure of his departure, climbed
down. They nervously cut some steaks from the
bull which they had killed, and hurried away, crest-
fallen, on the long tramp back to the settlements.
This incident, however, did not have the effect
which it might have been expected to have. It did
not make the king despise men. On the contrary,
he now knew them to be dangerous, and he also
knew that their chief power lay in the long dark
tubes which spit fire and made fierce sounds. It
was enough for him that he had once worsted them.
Ever afterward he gave them wide berth. And the
tradition of him would have come at last to be
doubted in the settlements, but for the vast, shed
antlers occasionally found lying on the diminished
snows of March.
But all the time, while the king waxed huge and
wise, and overthrew his enemies, and begot great
offspring that, for many years after he was dead,
were to make the Mamozekel famous, there was one
TEbc fttna of tbc flDamosefcel 333
grave incompleteness in his sovereignty. His old
panic fear of bears still shamed and harassed him.
The whiff of a harmless half-grown cub, engrossed
in stuffing its greedy red mouth with blueberries,
was enough to turn his blood to water and send
him off to other feeding-grounds. He chose his
ranges, indeed, first of all for their freedom from
the dreaded taint, and only second for the excellence
of their pasturage. This one unreasoning fear was
the drop of gall which went far toward embittering
all the days of his singularly favoured life. It was
as if the wood-gods, after endowing him so far
beyond his fellows, had repented of their lavishness,
and capriciously poisoned their gifts.
One autumn night, just at the beginning of the
calling season, this weakness of his betrayed the
king to the deepest humiliation which had ever
befallen him. He was then nearly seven years old;
and because his voice was known to every bull in
the Tobique country, there was never answer made
when his great challenge went stridently resounding
over the moonlit wastes. But on this particular
night, when he had roared perhaps for his own
amusement, or for the edification of his mate who
browsed near by, rather than with any expectation
of response, to his astonishment there came an an-
334 Ube IkinOreD ot tbe
swering defiance from the other side of the open.
A big, wandering bull, who had strayed up from
the Grand River region, had never heard of the
king, and was more than ready to put his valour
to test. The king rushed to meet him. Now it
chanced that between the approaching giants was
an old ash-tree growing out of a thicket. In this
thicket a bear had been grubbing for roots. When
he heard the king's first roar, he started to steal
away from the perilous proximity; but the second
bull's answer, from the direction in which he had
hoped to retreat, stopped him. In much perturba-
tion he climbed the ash-tree to a safe distance, and
curled himself into a black, furry ball, in a fork
of the branches.
The night was still, and no scents wafting to
sensitive nostrils. With short roars, and much
thrashing of the underbrush, the two bulls drew
near. When the king was just about abreast of
the bear's hiding-place, his arrogance broke into
fury, and he charged upon the audacious stranger.
Just as he did so, and just as his foe sprang to
meet him, a wilful night-wind puffed lightly through
the branches. It was a very small, irresponsible
wind; but it carried sharply to the king's nostrils
the strong, fresh taint of bear.
Ube tang of tbe fl&amosefcel 337
The smell was so strong, it seemed to the king
is if the bear must be fairly on his haunches. It
,vas like an icy cataract flung upon him. He shrank,
:rembled, and the old wounds twinged and
:ringed. The next moment, to the triumphant
imazement of his antagonist, he had wheeled aside
:o avoid the charge, and was off through the under-
Drush in ignominious flight. The newcomer, who,
tor all his stout-heartedness, had viewed with con-
:ern the giant bulk of his foe, stopped short in his
:racks and stared in bewilderment. So easy a vic-
tory as this was beyond his dreams, even beyond
his desires. However, a bull moose can be a phi-
losopher on occasion, and this one was not going
to quarrel with good luck. In high elation he strode
Dn up the meadow, and set himself, not unsuccess-
fully, to wooing the deserted and disgusted cow.
His triumph, however, was short-lived. About
moon-rise of the following night the king came back.
He was no longer thinking of bears, and his heart
was full of wrath. His vast challenge came down
from the near-by hills, making the night resound
with its short, explosive thunders. His approach
was accompanied by the thrashing of giant antlers
on the trees, and by a crashing as if the under-
growths were being trodden by a locomotive. There
338 ube Ifcinbreo of tbe Wiilb
was grim omen in the sounds ; and the cow, waving
her great ears back and forward thoughtfully, eyed
the Grand River bull with shrewd interest. The
stranger showed himself game, no whit daunted
by threatenings and thunder. He answered with
brave roarings, and manifested every resolution to
maintain his conquest. But sturdy and valorous
though he was, all his prowess went for little when
the king fell upon him, thrice terrible from the
memory of his humiliation. There was no such
thing as withstanding that awful charge. Before
it the usurper was borne back, borne down, over-
whelmed, as if he had been no more than a yearling
calf. He had no chance to recover. He was tram-
pled and ripped and thrust onward, a helpless sprawl
of unstrung legs and outstretched, piteous neck. It
was luck alone, or some unwonted kindness of
the wood-spirits, that saved his life from being
trodden and beaten out in that hour of terror. It
was close to the river-bank that he had made his
stand; and presently, to his great good fortune,
he was thrust over the brink. He fell into the
water with a huge splash. When he struggled to
his feet, and moved off, staggering, down the
shallow edges of the stream, the king looked over
and disdained to follow up the vengeance.
Ube Ifcino ot tbe flDamosefcel 339
Fully as he had vindicated himself, the king was
never secure against such a humiliation so long as
he rested thrall to his one fear. The threat of the
bear hung over him, a mystery of terror which
he could not bring himself to face. But at last, and
in the season of his weakness, when he had shed
his antlers, there came a day when he was forced
to face it. Then his kingliness was put to the
supreme trial.
He was now at the age of nine years, in the
splendour of his prime. He stood over seven feet
high at the shoulders, and weighed perhaps thirteen
hundred pounds. His last antlers, those which he
had shed two months before, had shown a gigantic
spread of nearly six feet.
It was late April. Much honeycombed snow and
ice still lingered in the deeper hollows. After a
high fashion of his own, seldom followed among
the moose of the Tobique region, the king had re-
joined his mate when she emerged from her spring
retreat with a calf at her flank. He was too lordly
in spirit to feel cast down or discrowned when his
head was shorn of its great ornament; and he
never felt the spring moroseness which drives most
bull moose into seclusion. He always liked to keep
his little herd together, was tolerant to the year-
340 ^bc lUn&reo of tbe TKflilo
lings, and even refrained from driving off the
two-year-olds until their own aggressiveness made
it necessary.
On this particular April day, the king was be-
striding a tall poplar sapling, which he had borne
down that he might browse upon its tender, sap-
swollen tips. By the water's edge the cow and the
yearling were foraging on the young willow shoots.
The calf, a big-framed, enterprising youngster two
weeks old, almost as fine a specimen of young
moosehood as the king had been at his age, was
poking about curiously to gather knowledge of
the wilderness world. He approached a big gray-
white boulder, whose base was shrouded in spruce
scrub, and sniffed apprehensively at a curious, pun-
gent taint that came stealing out upon the air.
He knew by intuition that there was peril in
that strange scent; but his interest overweighed his
caution, and he drew close to the spruce scrub.
Close, and yet closer; and his movement was so
unusual that it attracted the attention of the king,
who stopped browsing to watch him intently. A
vague, only half-realised memory of that far-off
day when he himself, a lank calf of the season,
went sniffing curiously at a thicket, stirred in his
brain ; and the stiff hair along his neck and shoulder
'King of tbe flbamoseftel 341
began to bristle. He released the poplar sapling,
and turned all his attention to the behaviour of the
calf.
The calf was very close to the green edges of
the spruce scrub, when he caught sight of a great
dark form within, which had revealed itself by a
faint movement. More curious than ever, but now
distinctly alarmed, he shrank back, turning at the
same time, as if to investigate from another and
more open side of the scrub.
The next instant a black bulk lunged forth with
incredible swiftness from the green, and a great
paw swung itself with a circular, sweeping motion,
upon the retreating calf. In the wilderness world,
as in the world of men, history has a trick of
repeating itself; and this time, as on that day nine
years before, the bear was just too late. The blow
did not reach its object till most of its force was
spent. It drew blood, and knocked the calf sprawl-
ing, but did no serious damage. With a bleat of
pain and terror, the little animal jumped to its
feet and ran away.
The bear would have easily caught him before
he could recover himself; but another and very
different voice had answered the bleat of the calf.
At the king's roar of fury the bear changed his plans
34> Hbe fctn&r.cfc of tbe
and slunk back into hiding. In a moment the king
came thundering up to the edge of the spruces.
There, planting his fore-feet suddenly till they
ploughed the ground, he stopped himself with a
mighty effort. The smell of the bear had smitten
him in the face.
The moment was a crucial one. The pause was
full of fate. Turning his head in indecision, he
caught a cry of pain from the calf as it ran to its
mother; and he saw the blood streaming down its
flank. Then the kingliness of his heart arose vic-
torious. With a roar, he breasted trampling into
the spruce scrub, heedless at last of the dreaded
scent.
The bear, meanwhile, had been seeking escape.
He had just emerged on the other side of the spruces,
and was slipping off to find a secure tree. As the
king thundered down upon him, he wheeled with
a savage growl, half squatted back, and struck out
sturdily with that redoubtable paw. But at the
same instant the king's edged hoofs came down upon
him with the impact of a battering ram. They
smashed in his ribs. They tore open his side. They
hurled him over so that his belly was exposed. He
was at a hopeless disadvantage. He had not an
instant for recovery. Those avenging hoofs, with
"IT WAS FEAR ITSELF THAT HE WAS WIPING OUT."
Ube "Ring ot tbe flDamosefcel 345
the power of a pile-driver behind them, smote like
lightning. The bear struck savagely, twice, thrice ;
and his claws tore their way through hide and
muscle till the king's blood gushed scarlet over his
prostrate foe's dark fur. Then, the growls and the
claw-strokes ceased; and the furry shape lay still,
outstretched, unresisting.
For a moment or two the king drew off, and eyed
the carcass. Then the remembrance of all his past
terror and shame surged hotly through him. He
pounced again upon the body, and pounded it, and
trampled it, and ground it down, till the hideous
mass bore no longer a resemblance to any thing that
ever carried the breath of life. It was not his
enemy only, not only the assailant of the helpless
calf, that he was thus completely blotting from exis-
tence, but it was fear itself that he was wiping
out.
At last, grown suddenly tired of rage, and some-
what faint from the red draining of his veins, the
king turned away and sought his frightened herd.
They gathered about him, trembling with excite-
ment, the light-coated cow, the dark yearling,
the lank, terrified calf. They stretched thin noses
toward him, questioning, wondering, troubled at
his hot, streaming wounds. But the king held his
346 ube lUn&re& ot tbe
head high, heeding neither the wounds nor the
herd. He cast one long, proud look up the valley
of the Mamozekel, his immediate, peculiar domain.
Then he looked southward over the lonely Serpen-
tine, northward across the dark-wooded Nictau, and
westward down the flood of the full, united stream.
He felt himself supreme now beyond challenge over
all the wild lands of Tobique.
For a long time the group stood so, breathing
at last quietly, still with that stillness which the
furtive kindreds know. There was no sound save
the soft, ear-filling roar of the three rivers, swollen
with freshet, rushing gladly to their confluence.
The sound was as a background to the cool, damp
silence of the April wilderness. Some belated snow
in a shaded hollow close at hand shrank and settled,
with a hushed, evasive whisper. Then the earliest
white-throat, from the top of a fir-tree, fluted across
the pregnant spring solitudes the six clear notes of
his musical and melancholy call.
in PZIM
In panoply of Speare
HERE was a pleasant humming all about
the bee-tree, where it stood solitary on the
little knoll upon the sunward slope of the
forest. It was an ancient maple, one side long since
blasted by lightning, and now decayed to the heart;
while the other side yet put forth a green bravery
of branch and leaf. High up under a dead limb was
a hole, thronged about with diligent bees who came
and went in long diverging streams against the sun-
steeped blue. A mile below, around the little, strag-
gling backwoods settlement, the buckwheat was in
bloom; and the bees counted the longest day too
short for the gathering of its brown and fragrant
sweets.
In fine contrast to their bustle and their haste was
a moveless dark brown figure clinging to a leafy
branch on the other and living side of the tree.
From a distance it might easily have been taken for
a big bird's-nest. Far out on the limb it sat, huddled
into a bristling ball. Its nose, its whole head in-
349
35 ^be frtn&refc ot tbe TOUID
deed, were hidden between its fore paws, which
childishly but tenaciously clutched at a little upright
branch. In this position, seemingly so precarious,
but really, for the porcupine, the safest and most
comfortable that could be imagined, it dozed away
the idle summer hours.
From the thick woods at the foot of the knoll
emerged a large black bear, who lifted his nose and
eyed shrewdly the humming streams of workers
converging at the hole in the bee-tree. For some
time the bear stood contemplative, till an eager light
grew in his small, cunning, half-humourous eyes.
His long red tongue came out and licked his lips,
as he thought of the summer's sweetness now stored
in the hollow tree. He knew all about that pros-
perous bee colony. He remembered when, two years
before, the runaway swarm from the settlement had
taken possession of the hole in the old maple. That
same autumn he had tried to rifle the treasure-house^
but had found the wood about the entrance still too
sound and strong for even such powerfully rending
claws as his. He had gone away surly with dis-
appointment, to scratch a few angry bees out of his
fur, and wait for the natural processes of decay to
weaken the walls of the citadel.
On this particular day he decided to try again.
35 1
He had no expectation that he would succeed ; but
the thought of the honey grew irresistible to him as
he dwelt upon it. He lumbered lazily up the knoll,
reared his dark bulk against the trunk, and started
to climb to the attack.
But the little workers in the high-set hive found
an unexpected protector in this hour of their need.
The dozing porcupine wol^e up, and took it into his
head that he wanted to go somewhere else. Per-
haps in his dreams a vision had come to him of
the lonely little oat-field in the clearing, where the
young grain was plumping out and already full of
milky sweetness. As a rule he preferred to travel
and feed by night. But the porcupine is the last
amid the wild kindreds to let convention interfere
with impulse, and he does what seems good to the
whim of the moment. His present whim was to
descend the bee-tree and journey over to the
Clearing.
The bear had climbed but seven or eight feet,
when he heard the scraping of claws on the bark
above. He heard also the light clattering noise,
unlike any other sound in the wilderness. He knew
it at once as the sound of the loose-hung, hollow
quills in a porcupine's active tail; and looking up
angrily, he saw the porcupine curl himself down-
352 ttbe IRfn&refc ot tbe
ward from a crotch and begin descending the trunk
to meet him.
The bear weighed perhaps four hundred or five
hundred pounds. The porcupine weighed perhaps
twenty-five pounds. Nevertheless, the bear stopped ;
and the porcupine came on. When he saw the bear,
he gnashed his teeth irritably, and his quills, his
wonderful panoply of finely barbed spears, erected
themselves all over his body till his usual bulk
seemed doubled. At the same time his colour
changed. It was almost as if he had grown sud-
denly pale with indignation; for when the long
quills stood up from among his blackish-brown fur
they showed themselves all white save for their
dark keen points. Small as he was in comparison
with his gigantic opponent, he looked, nevertheless,
curiously formidable. He grunted and grumbled
querulously, and came on with confidence, obsti-
nately proclaiming that no mere bear should for a
moment divert him from his purpose.
Whether by instinct, experience, or observation,
the bear knew something about porcupines. What
would honey be to him, with two or three of those
slender and biting spear-points embedded in his
nose? As he thought of it, he backed away with
increasing alacrity. He checked a rash impulse
"THE BEAR EYEL) HIM FOR SOME MOMENTS.
fit panoplg of Spears 355
to dash the arrogant little hinderer from the tree
and annihilate him with one stroke of his mighty
paw, but the mighty paw cringed, winced, and
drew back impotent, as its sensitive nerves consid-
ered how it would feel to be stuck full, like a pin-
cushion, with inexorably penetrating points. At
last, thoroughly outfaced, the bear descended to
the ground, and stood aside respectfully for the
porcupine to pass.
The porcupine, however, en reaching the foot
of the trunk, discovered an uncertainty in his mind.
His whim wavered. He stopped, scratched his
ears thoughtfully first with one fore paw and then
with the other, and tried his long, chisel-like front
teeth, those matchless gnawing machines, on a pro-
jecting edge of bark. The bear eyed him for some
moments, then lumbered off into the woods indiffer-
ently, convinced that the bee-tree would be just as
interesting on some other day. But before that
other day came around, the bear encountered Fate,
lying in wait for him, grim and implacable, be-
neath a trapper's deadfall in the heart of the
tamarack swamp. And the humming tribes in the
bee-tree were left to possess their honeyed common-
wealth in peace.
Soon after the bear had left the knoll, the porcu-
fttnfcrefc of tbe
pine appeared to make up his mind as to what he
wanted to do. With an air of fixed purpose he
started down the knoll, heading for the oat-field
and the clearing which lay some half-mile distant
through the woods. As he moved on the ground,
he was a somewhat clumsy and wholly grotesque
figure. He walked with a deliberate and precise air,
very slowly, and his legs worked as if the earth
were to them an unfamiliar element. He was about
two and a half feet long, short-legged, solid and
sturdy looking, with a nose curiously squared off so
that it should not get in the way of his gnawing.
As he confronted you, his great chisel teeth, bared
and conspicuous, appeared a most formidable
weapon. Effective as they were, however, they were
not a weapon which he was apt to call into use,
save against inanimate and edible opponents; be-
cause he could not do so without exposing his weak
points to attack, his nose, his head, his soft, un-
protected throat. His real weapon of offence was
his short, thick tail, which was heavily armed with
very powerful quills. With this he could strike
slashing blows, such as would fill an enemy's face
or paws with spines, and send him howling from the
encounter. Clumsy and inert it looked, on ordinary
occasions ; but when need arose, its muscles had the
lightning action of a strong steel spring.
In panoply of Spears 357
As the porcupine made his resolute way through
the woods, the manner of his going differed from
that of all the other kindreds of the wild. He went
not furtively. He had no particular objection to
making a noise. He did not consider it necessary
to stop every little while, stiffen himself to a mon-
ument of immobility, cast wary glances about the
gloom, and sniff the air for the taint of enemies.
He did not care who knew of his coming; and he
did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply
of biting spears he felt himself secure, and in that
security he moved as if he held in fee the whole
green, shadowy, perilous woodland world.
A wood-mouse, sitting in the door of his burrow
between the roots of an ancient fir-tree, went on
washing his face with his dainty paws as the por-
cupine passed within three feet of him. Almost
any other forest traveller would have sent the timid
mouse darting to the depths of his retreat; but he
knew that the slow-moving figure, however terrible
to look at, had no concern for wood-mice. The
porcupine had barely passed, however, when a
weasel came in view. In a flash the mouse was
gone, to lie hidden for an hour, with trembling
heart, in the furthest darkness of his burrow.
Continuing his journey, the porcupine passed
358 Ube ftfufcrefc of tbe
under a fallen tree. Along the horizontal trunk lay
a huge lynx, crouched flat, movelessly watching
for rabbit, chipmunk, mink, or whatever quarry
might come within his reach. He was hungry, as
a lynx is apt to be. He licked his chaps, and his
wide eyes paled with savage fire, as the porcupine
dawdled by beneath the tree, within easy clutch
of his claws. But his claws made no least motion
of attack. He, too, like the bear, knew something
about porcupines. In a few moments, however,
when the porcupine had gone on some ten or twelve
feet beyond his reach, his feelings overcame him so
completely that he stood up and gave vent to an
appalling scream of rage. All the other wild things
within hearing trembled at the sound, and were
still ; and the porcupine, startled out of his equi-
poise, tucked his nose between his legs, and bristled
into a ball of sharp defiance. The lynx eyed him
venomously for some seconds, then dropped lightly
from the perch, and stole off to hunt in other neigh-
bourhoods, realising that his reckless outburst of
bad temper had warned all the coverts for a quarter
of a mile around. The porcupine, uncurling,
grunted scornfully and resumed his journey.
Very still, and lonely and bright the clearing lay
in the flooding afternoon sunshine. It lay along
In IPanoplp of Spears 359
beside a deeply rutted, grass-grown backwoods road
which had been long forgotten by the attentions of
the road-master. It was enclosed from the forest
in part by a dilapidated wall of loose stones, in part
by an old snake fence, much patched with brush.
The cabin which had once presided over its solitude
had long fallen to ruin ; but its fertile soil had saved
it from being forgotten. A young farmer-lumber-
man from the settlement a couple of miles away
held possession of it, and kept its boundaries more
or less intact, and made it yield him each year a
crop of oats, barley, or buckwheat.
Emerging from the woods, the porcupine crawled
to the top of the stone wall and glanced about him
casually. Then he descended into the cool, light-
green depths of the growing oats. Here he was
completely hidden, though his passage was indi-
cated as he went by the swaying and commotion
among the oat-tops.
The high plumes of the grain, of course, were far
above the porcupine's reach ; and for a healthy appe-
tite like his it would have been tedious work indeed
to pull down the stalks one by one. At this point, he
displayed an ingenious resourcefulness with which
he is seldom credited by observers of his kind. Be-
cause he is slow in movement, folk are apt to con-
360 ube frtnoreo of tbe
elude that he is slow in wit; whereas the truth is
that he has fine reserves of shrewdness to fall back
on in emergency. Instead of pulling and treading
down the oats at haphazard, he moved through the
grain in a small circle, leaning heavily inward.
When he had thus gone around the circle several
times, the tops of the grain lay together in a con-
venient bunch. This succulent sheaf he dragged
down, and devoured with relish.
When he had abundantly satisfied his craving for
young oats, he crawled out upon the open sward
by the fence, and carelessly sampled the bark of a
seedling apple-tree. While he was thus engaged
a big, yellow dog came trotting up the wood-road,
poking his nose inquisitively into every bush and
stump in the hope of finding a rabbit or chipmunk
to chase. He belonged to the young farmer who
owned the oat-field; and when, through the rails
of the snake fence, he caught sight of the porcupine,
he was filled with noisy wrath. Barking and yelp-
ing, partly with excitement, and partly as a sig-
nal to his master who was trudging along the road
far behind him, he clambered over the fence, and
bore down upon the trespasser.
The porcupine was not greatly disturbed by this
loud onslaught, but he did not let confidence make
Hn panoply of Spears 361
him careless. He calmly tucked his head under
his breast, set his quills in battle array, and awaited
the event with composure.
Had he discovered the porcupine in the free
woods, the yellow dog would have let him severely
alone. But in his master's oat-field, that was a dif-
ferent matter. Moreover, the knowledge that his
master was coming added to his zeal and rashness;
and he had long cherished the ambition to kill a
porcupine. He sprang forward, open-jawed,
and stopped short when his fangs were just within
an inch or two of those bristling and defiant points.
Caution had come to his rescue just in time.
For perhaps half a minute he ran, whining and
baffled, around the not-to-be daunted ball of spines.
Then he sat down upon his haunches, lifted up his
muzzle, and howled for his master to come and
help him.
As his master failed to appear within three sec-
onds, his impatience got the better of him, and he
again began running around the porcupine, snapping
fiercely, but never coming within two or three inches
of the militant points. For a few moments these
two or three inches proved to be a safe distance.
Such a distance from the shoulders, back, and sides
was all well enough. But suddenly, he was so mis-
362 Ube ftinfereft of tbe Wtlo
guided as to bring his teeth together within a couple
of inches of the armed but quiescent tail. This was
the instant for which the porcupine had been wait-
ing. The tail flicked smartly. The big dog jumped,
gave a succession of yelping cries, pawed wildly
at his nose, then tucked his tail between his legs,
scrambled over the fence, and fled away to his mas-
ter. The porcupine unrolled himself, and crawled
into an inviting hole in the old stone wall.
About ten minutes later a very angry man, armed
with a fence-stake, appeared at the edge of the
clearing with a cowed dog at his heels. He wanted
to find the porcupine which had stuck those quills
into his dog's nose. Mercifully merciless, he had
held the howling dog in a grip of iron while he
pulled out the quills with his teeth; and now he
was after vengeance. Knowing a little, but not
everything, about porcupines, he searched every
tree in the immediate neighbourhood, judging that
the porcupine, after such an encounter, would make
all haste to his natural retreat. But he never looked
in the hole in the wall; and the yellow dog, who
had come to doubt the advisability of finding por-
cupines, refused firmly to assist in the search. In a
little while, when his anger began to cool, he gave
over the hunt in disgust, threw away the fence-
Hn panopls ot Spears 363
v
stake, bit off a goodly chew from the fig of black
tobacco which he produced from his hip-pocket, and
strode away up the grassy wood-road.
For perhaps half an hour the porcupine dozed in
the hole among the stones. Then he woke up,
crawled out, and moved slowly along the top of the
wall.
There was a sound of children's voices coming up
the road; but the porcupine, save for a grumble
of impatience, paid no attention. Presently the
children came in sight, a stocky little boy of nine
or ten, and a lank girl of perhaps thirteen, making
their way homeward from school by the short cut
over the mountain. Both were barefooted and bare-
legged, deeply freckled, and with long, tow-coloured
locks. The boy wore a shirt and short breeches
of blue-gray homespun, the breeches held up pre-
cariously by one suspender. On his head was a
tattered and battered straw; and in one hand he
swung a little tin dinner-pail. The girl wore the
like blue-gray homespun for a petticoat, with a
waist of bright red calico, and carried a limp pink
sunbonnet on her arm.
" Oh, see the porkypine ! " cried the girl, as they
came abreast of the stone wall.
"By gosh! Let's kill it!" exclaimed the stocky
364 TTbe frtnoreo of tbe WtU>
little boy, starting forward eagerly, with a prompt
efflorescence of primitive instincts. But his sister
clutched him by the arm and anxiously restrained
him.
" My lands, Jimmy, you musn't go near a porky-
pine like that ! " she protested, more learned than
her brother in the hoary myths of the settlements.
" Don't you know he can fling them quills of his'n
at you, an' they'll go right through an' come out
the other side?"
" By gosh ! " gasped the boy, eyeing the uncon-
cerned animal with apprehension, and edging off to
***'* the furthermost ditch. Hand in hand, their eyes
wide with excitement, the two children passed be-
yond the stone wall. Then, as he perceived that the
porcupine had not seemed to notice them, the boy's
hunting instinct revived. He stopped, set down the
tin dinner-pail, and picked up a stone.
"No, you don't, Jimmy!" intervened the girl,
with mixed emotions of kindliness and caution, as
she grabbed his wrist and dragged him along.
"Why, Sis?" protested the boy, hanging back,
and looking over his shoulder longingly. " Jest
let me fling a stone at him ! "
" No ! " said his sister, with decision. " He ain't
a-hurtin' us, an' he's mindin' his own business. An'
Un panoply of Spears 365
I reckon maybe he can fling quills as fur as you can
fling stones ! "
Convinced by this latter argument, the boy gave
up his design, and suffered his wise sister to lead
him away from so perilous a neighbourhood. The
two little figures vanished amid the green glooms
beyond the clearing, and the porcupine was left
untroubled in his sovereignty.
ii.
That autumn, late one moonlight night, the por-
cupine was down by a little forest lake feasting on
lily pads. He occupied a post of great advantage,
a long, narrow ledge of rock jutting out into the
midst of the lilies, and rising but an inch or two
above the water. Presently, to his great indigna-
tion, he heard a dry rustling of quills behind him,
and saw another porcupine crawl out upon his rock.
He faced about, bristling angrily and gnashing his
teeth, and advanced to repel the intruder.
The intruder hesitated, then came on again with
confidence, but making no hostile demonstrations
whatever. When the two met, the expected con-
flict was by some sudden agreement omitted. They
touched blunt noses, squeaked and grunted together
for awhile till a perfect understanding was estab-
366 Ube 1tint>ret> of tbe KAifc
lished; then crawled ashore and left the lily pads
to rest, broad, shiny, and unruffled in the moon-
light, little platters of silver on the dark glass of
the lake.
The newcomer was a female ; and with such brief
wooing the big porcupine had taken her for his mate.
Now he led her off to show her the unequalled den
which he had lately discovered. The den was high
in the side of a heap of rocks, dry in all weathers,
and so overhung by a half -uprooted tree as to be
very well concealed from passers and prowlers. Its
entrance was long and narrow, deterrent to rash
investigators. In fact, just after the porcupine had
moved in, a red fox had discovered the doorway
and judged it exactly to his liking; but on finding
that the occupant was a porcupine, he had hastily
decided to seek accommodation elsewhere. In this
snug house the two porcupines settled contentedly
for the winter.
The winter passed somewhat uneventfully for
them, though for the rest of the wood-folk it was
a season of unwonted hardship. The cold was more
intense and more implacable than had been known
about the settlements for years. Most of the wild
creatures, save those who could sleep the bitter
months away and abide the coming of spring, found
In panoply of Spears 367
themselves face to face with famine. But the por-
cupines feared neither famine nor cold. The brown
fur beneath their quills was thick and warm, and
hunger was impossible to them with all the trees
of the forest for their pasturage. Sometimes, when
the cold made them sluggish, they would stay all
day and all night in a single balsam-fir or hemlock,
stripping one branch after another of leaf and twig,
indifferent to the monotony of their diet. At other
times, however, they were as active and enterprising
as if all the heats of summer were loosing their
sinews. On account of the starvation-madness that
was everywhere ranging the coverts, they were more
than once attacked as they crawled lazily over the
snow; but on each occasion the enemy, whether
lynx or fox, fisher or mink, withdrew discomfited,
with something besides hunger in his hide to think
about.
Once, in midwinter, they found a prize which
added exquisite variety to their bill of fare. Hav-
ing wandered down to the outskirts of the settle-
ments, they discovered, cast aside among the bushes,
an empty firkin which had lately contained salt
pork. The wood, saturated with brine, was de-
licious to the porcupines. Greedily they gnawed at
it, returning night after night to the novel banquet,
368 ftbe fttnorefc of tbe WU5
till the last sliver of the flavoured wood was gone.
Then, after lingering a day or two longer in the
neighbourhood, expecting another miracle, they re-
turned to their solitudes and their hemlock.
When winter was drawing near its close, but
spring had not yet sent the wilderness word of her
coming, the porcupines got her message in their
blood. They proclaimed it abroad in the early twi-
light from the tops of the high hemlocks, in queer,
half-rhythmical choruses of happy grunts and
squeaks. The sound was far from melodious, but
it pleased every one of the wild kindred to whose
ears it came; for they knew that when the porcu-
pines got trying to sing, then the spring thaws were
hurrying up from the south.
At last the long desired one came; and every lit-
tle rill ran a brawling brook in the fulness of its
joy. And the ash-buds swelled rich purple ; and the
maples crimsoned with their misty blooms ; and the
skunk cabbage began to thrust up bold knobs of
emerald, startling in their brightness, through the
black and naked leaf-mould of the swamp. And
just at this time, when all the wild kindred, from the
wood-mouse to the moose, felt sure that life was
good, a porcupine baby was born in the snug den
among the rocks.
" A WEASEL GLIDED NOISELESSLY UP TO THE DOOR OF THE
DEN."
In panoply of Spears 37 *
It was an astonishingly big baby, the biggest,
in proportion to the size of its parents, of all the
babies of the wild. In fact it was almost as big
as an average bear cub. It was covered with long,
dark brown, silky fur, under which the future pan-
oply of spear-points was already beginning to make
way through the tender skin. Its mother was very
properly proud, and assiduous in her devotion. And
the big father, though seemingly quite indifferent,
kept his place contentedly in the den instead of going
off sourly by himself to another lair as the porcupine
male is apt to do on the arrival of the young.
One evening about dusk, when the young porcu-
pine was but three days old, a weasel glided noise-
lessly up to the door of the den, and sniffed. His
eyes, set close together and far down toward his
malignant, pointed nose, were glowing red with
the lust of the kill. Fierce and fearless as he was,
he knew well enough that a porcupine was some-
thing for him to let alone. But this, surely, was
his chance to feed fat an ancient grudge; for he
hated everything that he could not hope to kill.
He had seen the mother porcupine feeding comfort-
ably in the top of a near-by poplar. And now he
made assurance doubly sure by sniffing at her trail,
which came out from the den and did not return. As
37 2 tlbe lrtn&reo of tbe TJBUlfc
for the big male porcupine, the prowler took it for
granted that he had followed the usage of his kind,
and gone off about other business. Like a snake,
he slipped in, and found the furry baby all alone.
There was a strong, squeaking cry, a moment's
struggle; and then the weasel drank eagerly at the
blood of his easy prey. The blood, and the fierce
joy of the kill, were all he wanted, for his hunting
was only just begun.
The assassin stayed but a minute with his victim,
then turned swiftly to the door of the den. But the
door was blocked. It was filled by an ominous,
bristling bulk, which advanced upon him slowly,
inexorably, making a sharp, clashing sound with
its long teeth. The big porcupine had come home.
And his eyes blazed more fiercely red than those
of the weasel.
The weasel, fairly caught, felt that doom was
upon him. He backed away, over the body of his
victim, to the furthest depth of the den. But,
though a ruthless murderer, the most cruel of all
the wild kindred, he was no coward. He would
evade the slow avenger if he could; but if not, he
would fight to the last gasp.
Against this foe the porcupine scorned his cus-
tomary tactics, and depended upon his terrible, cut-
In panoply of Spears 373
ting teeth. At the same time he knew that the
weasel was desperate and deadly. Therefore he
held his head low, shielding his tender throat.
When he reached the wider part of the den, he
suddenly swung sidewise, thus keeping the exit
still blocked.
Seeing now that there was no escape, the weasel
gathered his forces for one last fight. Like light-
ning he sprang, and struck; and being, for speed,
quite matchless among the wild folk, he secured
a deadly hold on the porcupine's jaw. The porcu-
pine squeaked furiously and tried to shake his ad-
versary off. With a sweep of his powerful neck,
he threw the weasel to one side, and then into the
air over his head.
The next instant the weasel came down, sprawl-
ing widely, full upon the stiffly erected spears of the
porcupine's back. They pierced deep into his tender
belly. With a shrill cry he relaxed his hold on the
avenger's jaw, shrank together in anguish, fell to
the ground, and darted to the exit. As he passed
he got a heavy slap from the porcupine's tail, which
filled his face and neck with piercing barbs. Then
he escaped from the den and fled away toward his
own lair, carrying his death with him. Before he
had gone a hundred yards one of the quills in his
374 Ube frtnfcrefc ot tbc Wiilb
belly reached a vital part. He faltered, fell, stretched
his legs out weakly, and died. Then a red squirrel,
who had been watching him in a quiver of fear
and hate, shot from his hiding-place, ran wildly up
and down his tree, and made the woods ring with
his sharp, barking chatter of triumph over the death
of the universal enemy.
In the midst of the squirrel's shrill rejoicings the
porcupine emerged from his den. He seemed to
hesitate, which is not the way of a porcupine. He
looked at his mate, still foraging in the top of her
poplar, happily unaware for the present of how her
little world had changed. He seemed to realise that
the time of partings had come, the time when he
must resume his solitude. He turned and looked
at his den, he would never find another like it !
Then he crawled off through the cool, wet woods,
where the silence seemed to throb sweetly with the
stir and fulness of the sap. And in a hollow log,
not far from the bee-tree on the knoll, he found
himself a new home, small and solitary.
THE END.
A 000 029 432 2
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